Yes, a carbon tax, to be sure. But ALSO: get governments at all levels to commit to purchasing ALL their electric power from wind-solar-green by 2020. This would greatly boost green production, and also R&D becaus a market could be predicted.
We spent something like $1T for all our so-called wars on terror. And the president said recently that TERRORISM is the nation's biggest threat.
If he'd start saying that GW/CC is the biggest threat and spend $1T on energy R&D and on actually building some solar-arrays in Nevada or some other sunny place, we'd see some progress.
I concur in Juan's veryy pessimistic reading of USA's political system. The oligarchs aren't going to give up, and only a strict Constitutional Amendment (against corporate and other Fat Cat political spending) is likely to rescue the planet.,
If all news media were run (supported) by small contributions from people interested in "the news" and there was no big-money ownership and also no big-money advertising, then "the news" would have a cha nce to be reported "as if people matter".
But oligarchic control of the media (as also of government, of course) make the population tools of businesss, and remove the knowledge necessary for outrage.
RD Sultan: There is an alternative, in principle, namely, that the nations overcome pressure against H/R work on Palestine and apply real pressure on the State of israel, on its economy as a whole, with the goal of getting israel to remove all settlers, demolish th4 wall and all the settlements (buildings). Likelihood today? Small. But what is the likelihood, today, of anything other than continued apartheid?
It is possible that these people why say they believe (whatever) actually do believe it. Could be. why not? Strict upbringing may condition a person to believe anything -- including what local religious leaders tell him the Bible says. And he will not inquire (or hear) what ELSE the Bible says. You betcha.
so, it is possible. But it is also possible that some politicians are just saying what the oligarchs (BIG-OIL, BIG-BANKs, BIG-DEFENSE, etc) want them to say. Congress, after all gets a small salary from the USa but a LARGE CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION from the oligarchs and they know which side their bread is buttered on.
We are SEEING the effects of climate change daily. But these fellow have eyes but will not see. (Check the Bible on that one.) trees dying in colorado and opints north from beetles which nio longer die in cold winterse because winters are no longer cold enough. Ethiopia drying out. Crop failures. water failures. Arctic ice melting.
Capitalism is indeed marching forward (or at least onward). There are two troubles with capitalism these days. One is the things that companies do AS commercial companies. Pollute, deny Labor rights, etc.
The other is use small bits of their enormous wealth to buy/rent politicians (via bribes, campaign contributions, revolving-door arrangements, jobs-for-relatives, etc). This last means that democracy (where formally available) is a vanishing thing.
What this presages for "speaking truth to power" ius hard to say with precision but easy to predict in general terms: what "gwets said" or "gets published" is likely to be what the corporations want it to be. see The-biological-structure-called-humankind-has-gone-haywire.php
Let these sanctions fall. Yes. But I still "carry a torch" for sanctions (the "S" in "BDS") agaisnt Israel to compel Israel to remove the settlers, demolish the wall and the settlements (yes!) (per UNSC 465 (1980)) and to lift the siege on Gaza.
THOSE sanctions -- if they ever eventuate -- should remain in place (if initially imposed) until the tasks assigned are completed.
Would Iran, if admitted to the halls of power, demand something "real" for Palestine, or merely get on board the USA's and Israel's "let them eat nothing" Marie Antoinette imitation?
The idea of Iran's getting Hezbollah to tone itself down is a mysterious idea for me -- probably because I don't know what Hezbollah does. I thoight it was a defensive army whose business was to punish Israel the next time Israel attacks Lebanon. What'm I missing?
Moreover, if USA is satisfied that Iran is not working toward bombs and lifts sanctions, and Israel THEN acts by aggressive warfare against Iran, the realization openly-acknowledged today that Israel (and not Iran) is the loose cannon in the region will be so strong that movement toward sanctions on Israel (say w.r.t. settlements) will grow.
Dust to dust, the sooner the quicker, is the Christian way, I guess, to hear some of these soi-dissant "Christians" tell it. Whereas trying to help people (with food, medicine, education, housing, jobs, etc.) is the work of ??? the devil ???. No, no! "Love thy neighbor" is a directive as to feeling (alone), not to action. "Charity" is a directive tio feeling alone, not to action.
I do wish that the less punitive, less denying, "Christians" would stand up and preach a generous, helping Christianity a little louder, a little more publicly, than they seem to do.
There are many environmentally-conscious people in USA and elsewhere who feel (if my own feelings are a guide) FRUSTRATED that the many environmental organizations to not unite to make opposing global warming a SINGLE FOCUS of environmental action.
Instead, one organization wishes to save whales or polar bears, another some other endangered species, or promote or oppose nuclear power, etc., THERE IS NO SINGLE UNITED MESSAGE.
Perhaps Greenpeace can negotiate WITHIN the environmental movement to energize such a SINGLE-CONSCIOUSNESS-OF-PURPOSE.
After all, action on limate change is opposed (it seems) by all the major corporations, and it is these corporations which appear to "rule the world", not the citizens of democracies -- UNLESS the citizens are essentially united.
If the (even the lo-level) guys at NSA have the ability to seek LOVEINT, then they have the ability to search for BLACKMAILINT, just as J Edgar Hoover notoriously did.
In that case, then (even hi-level) guys at NSA thus have the power to seek BLACKMAILINT on government figures including JUDGES and thus to control the entire government -- either in a individually-determined way or in service of an ideology or political group or powerful interest such as KOCH BROS.
To me, THIS is the scandal and the most scary possibility.
Agreed. CLIMATE CHANGE is far more dangerous to the whole human race (and thus to international capitalism in the long run, that is, in the time-frame they do not appear to care about) than TERRORISM, WAR, FAILED ECONOMIES, etc.
BIG MONEY (corporate and private) is "selling the farm" here due to its absolute control of governments and complete lack of concern for human welfare.
The test of racism would be if, for example, and heaven forfend, Palestinian Christians should conduct terrorist acts in the USA. Then we could see if "terrorism" was (in practical terms) defined in terms of religion, skin color, or something else.
If dark-skinned Christians are accused merely as criminals where similarly-acting (as alleged, naturally, we sometimes forget that little nicety, don't we?) light-skinned Muslims are accused of "terrorism", then we'll know it is all about religion.
It seems that harsh sanctions have a dual action, at least against a non-wholly-democratic state (I wonder whether that includes Israel).
First, it persuades the non-democratic state to stiffen its back and resist the sanctions -- rather than comply with them. Or perhaps the sanctions demanded an impossible compliance rather than a merely undesired one.
Second, when the sanctions have failed after a long time to bring the victim regime to its knees, the imosers of the sanctions then feel morally justified to increase the sanctions or to go to war.
What never happens is that the imposers decide that they were wrong to impose (or to increase) the sanctions.
Israel, India, and Pakistan (and perhaps N-Korea) got off easily. Not sure about NK.
I wonder whetehr the sanctions that BDS demands for Israel -- and which the world refuses to provide -- would end the occupation or result in war or something worse (worse than the sanctions, maybe something worse than war).
Well, well -- "well regulated" ? But hold it, cars are dangerous and useful; can they really require training, a test, adn title and tags? Gosh, who knew?
This should be nothing new (though obviously very serious).
While it is a fall-out from GLOBAL WARMING, it is more intrinsically a fall-out from non-action-to-reverse-global-warming, caused by the control over governments of the global giant capitalist corporations and banks (I call them part of the oligarchy) -- see this analysis. The capitalists are wedded to growth adn to growth of use of fossil-fuels and, of coruse, don't give a darn about people, any people.
Climate change is so important a topic -- both intrinsically and because new data comes out frequently such as the very scary Russian melting-permafrost-methane-release -- that EVERY editorialist, EVERY commentator on ANY SUBJECT shoudl be sure to mention climate change possibly as follows:
"THERE ARE NEW DISCOVERIES CONFIRMING MAN-MADE CLIMATE CHANGE EVERY DAY. THERE IS NO MORE IMPORTANT TOPIC FOR DISCUSSION BY ANYONE IN THIS 21st CENTURY".
"Treason" is related to AIDING enemies. USA efforts w.r.t. Iraq did not aid any enemy (unless Al-Qaida), but rather harmed its (new and USA-created) enemy. Does not sound like "treason". But does sound like "war crime", as the USA was neither attacked not threatened. Bush and others should be prosecuted.
Mis-spending USA's money on the war generally and on the mercenaries (Blackwater) and on the re-building (Halliburton) is typical of wars, which are performed in considerable part as a means of enriching "merchants of death"; the absense of any mechanism for accounting and controlling those expenditures seems to me not an accident but rather as proof of this point. All this could be construed as robbery, robbing the USA to enrich the few -- and this would not be the only example.
To my mind this discussion aims at the wrong questions entirely,
If a man is sitting at a cafe drinking coffee and planning an act of war, then he is little different from his brother doing the same thing in Yemen. An act of war is an act of war, and planning is planning. (I am assuming the degree of destruction being planned is the same in each case and has the same likelihood of occurring if not stiffled.)
The BIG ISSUE in my mind is the issue of who determines the dangerousness of the thoughts of guys sitting at cafe's drinkling coffee -- and surrounded by innocent civilians.
If our police departments are not allowed to do preventive arrests (to say nothing of preventive assassinations), then either our rules for police are wrong or our rules for drones are wrong.
Don't know that Remnick was really predicting the rise of Naftali Bennett. Perhaps (and more usefully) he was SENSITIZING the New Yorker's readers (many of them New York Jews who know they are supposed to support Israel but who are also liberals) that Israel is not the nice-cuddly-teddy-bear that it is sometimes portrayed.
imagine that the people of the USA, generally, were, after so many years, ACTUALLY TO LEARN WHAT ISRAEL IS ABOUT! that may have been Remnick's purpose. DESCRIPTION without apparent judgment.
There is a strong need -- if the DESPERATE URGENCY of opposing climate change be well understood by everyone -- that scientists (who must act cautiously when they act AS scientists) should act robustly when they act AS citizens, abandoning caution as to absolute certainty in favor of caution in face of massive threat and great uncertainty -- including uncertainty of how great the threat is.
Problem is, that too many Congressmen want to drive their [gas-guzzling, CO2-spewing] SUV's to the fund-raising parties where they can re-fuel for their next campaign on money from BIGs (such as BIG-OIL, BIG-COAL, [BIG-ZION], [BIG-ARMS]).
These Congressmen don't have TIME to learn about (or become fearful about) climate change. They are really, really too busy staying with the program, which means constant fund-raising.
Does that "carbon tax" include a tax on coal extracted from the earth and then sold (e.g., to China)? Just asking, for clarification. Not too good to back off of BURNING fossil fuels but continue to mine and sell the stuff to people who do not have a carbon tax.
I think I'm saying the carbon tax should be world-wide, internationally implemented, uniform, and a tax on PRODUCTION (mining, pumping) fossil-fuels. Where should the tax thereby raised be spent? I guess on developing "green" energy sources world-wide. And not necessarily in the same places that happen to "enjoy" the fossil-fuel reserves.
I love all this ancient history, especially the tantalizing advances of Muslim science which -- it seems -- died out later, as science rose in Europe.
Today, as the USA and China and much of the world IGNORE the science of CLIMATE CHANGE, the whole world is showing itself "unready" or "ill-advised" and much of the Republican party in the USA shows itself to be anti-science, as if wishing the USA to die back (as science in Islam did after 1013).
The history I'd love to read is not the who-won and who-lost, the battles, etc., but the reasons for the advances and retreats toward and away from knowledge, toward and away from freedom (for anybody!), and the like.
If climate-change is the reason for the advance of Europe and the retreat of Islam (as it was for the retreat of the Central-American Mayans and the North-American Anasazi -- then shouldn't we REALLY be talking about that?
Indians
This web-site also asks about the USA storing DEPLETED URANIUM in Hawaii:
On Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2012, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) held a meeting with the U.S. Army about whether to grant the Army a “License to Possess” Depleted uranium (DU) in Hawaii at Schofield Barracks on Oahu and the Pohakuloa Training Area (PTA) on Hawaii island. The meeting, instead of being held in Hawaii, was held in Maryland. The public could listen by phone to the 2 and 1/2 hour meeting and ask questions for 1/2 hour after the meeting ended. While no formal decision was made, the writing is on the wall. A license will be granted to the Army. The mongoose, once again, will be put in charge of guarding the hen house.
"For the first time, the European Court of Human Rights has found the US Central Intelligence Agency guilty of torturing and sodomizing an innocent man."
Glad he was innocent. But the narrator, valentine, says the court based its judgment on his illegal removal (kidnapping) and torture, not on his innocence.
This event should also be an opportunity to get Americans -- who have such a kindly reservoir of concern for the psychological health of children -- to contemplate the effects of the USA's 10 years of recent wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, on the children who live there and experience "Newtown" events repeatedly, sometimes daily.
Newtown was the one-off effort of a madman. The wars and their daily carnage are the policy of our elected government. This carnage is very bad for the psychological health of small children, too young to respond by proper and health-promoting anger against the USA.
And Israel does very much the same in Gaza and sometimes in Lebanon. And the USA supports this carnage. It is very bad for the psychological health of small children, too young to respond by proper anger against Israel and the USA.
I don't really expect to see this sort of response, however. Americans do not "see" the victims of our wars, nor do we (mostly) see our wars as crimes.
Couldn't the directors and officers be sued individually for illegal acts (for failing to act properly as fiduciaries)? And how would they defend themselves -- with a Twinkies defense?
USA surely helps get immunity and impunity for Israel and its leaders. No question. And the failure of EU and others to act may be due in large part to USA pressure (as well as to laziness, economic ties, and AIPAC-like political pressure activity).
However, IMO all that is needed to reverse the occupation (and end the settlements and so forth) is for a sufficient number of countries to make clear law-based and human-rights-based demands (removal of all settlers and dismantling of the wall and of all settlements has long seemed to be the proper demand) and then to seek to enforce their demands by (preferably concerted) sanction activity.
But the key is ACTION. Israel has shown for 64 years that it knows that "talk is cheap" and it has never responded to what I call "mere words". Read UNSC 465 (1980), an example of the UNSC saying the right things but as "mere words", that is, without enforcement sanctions.
I have been assuming that storm/drought was the more immediate path of climate-change-destructiveness with concomitant crop loss (for both reasons). I don't know much, just scared. Also I am worried about "tipping points" (strong feedbacks that promise massive and irreversible changes) such as the melting of arctic permafrosts -- thereby releasing untold amounts of CO2 and CH4 (methane) which will make the greenhouse contributions of humankind (mostly the technological "west") seem trivial in comparison.
The refusal of the BIGs to admit the reality of climate change argues a severe lack of knowledge and a belief that there is lots of time left to respond so as to limit the damage.
The most severe lack of knowledge is the belief that things could not be worse than the cautious scientific community has assured us. The scientists have been cautious out of ordinarily commendable reluctance to say more than they know for certain (e.g. with high probability). But what they don't know "for sure" can be very bad indeed.
Has anyone been monitoring the temperature inside the CAN that they keep kicking down the road?
Do the world's politicians hate the big-money folk so much that they want to incinerate THEM -- as well, of course, as the rest, remainder, and residue of unimportant, negligible, miserable folk, which is to say, US -- by this entirely predictable and increasingly unavoidable, irremediable tragedy?
I only call it a "tragedy" because I have a fondness for the music of Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Mozart, Mendelssohn, etc., which is unlikely to survive when most of the human race has been treated to an Israel-trashes-Gaza sort of embrace.
Whatever happened to: WHAT GOD HAS PUT TOGETHER LET NO MAN PUT ASUNDER?
I'd like to think (but do not believe) that Obama -- lusting in his heart -- wants to do the decent thing as his Cairo speech suggests, and is looking for a way to break AIPAC's stranglehold whilst appearing to cave in to it. So he goes overboard outwardly doing AIPAC's bidding (maybe not secretly, as on Gaza) and the USA and Israel get laughed at in EU and elsewhere and he is happy (inwardly) and goes about other business waiting for the USA to wake up and tell him to behave decently. (Gee, I thought that's what the election was for!)
Mere citizenship is not enough. Can you imagine how Israeli citizenship "rights" would go downhill for Palestinian Arabs if all the exiles of 1948 were "granted" Israeli citizenship and permission to return to somewhere inside "Israel"? It's bad enough today for those who live there. It might not include the right to vote, and, even today, many Palestinian political parties cannot "run" for elections because they do not agree that Israel is "the state of the Jewish people".
My guess is that USA and Israel went along with an unclear agreement to lift the blockade (and a clear agreement against cross border violence by both sides) IN RETURN for an agreement (maybe a side-agreement) by Egypt not to let major weapons into Gaza. What else did Israel (and USA) get out of the agreement (at the cost of honoring Hamas and Egypt's Morsi)?
The problem with a USA government (and Congress) that (perhaps responding solely to AIPAC pressures) is ABSOLUTELY HEARTLESS about Palestinians -- is that heartlessness prevents our noble governing class from attending to other important business which requires "heart" -- such as reversing GLOBAL WARMING.
Kinda hard for these noble Solons to take their blinders off, isn't it?
But they do not object to assassination, blockade (7 years ?), sniping from the border, etc.? And, turning to West Obama and others do not seem to think it worth mentioning that settlers and settlements (buildings on confiscated land) and wall (ditto) are present illegally.
Palestine/Israel is a wilderness, wild, a land outside the law. There is no legal restraint on Israel, no legal recourse for Palestinians. And the USA is the chief implementer. If Obama cares at all, he can only be waiting for Israel to outshine its usual horrible self. (So easy to "go too far" when you're on a roll.)
1948? 1967? 2005 (blockade of Gaza)? The history stretches back and is of no importance to those who (what?) manage current brush fires?
And Egypt and Jordan have given Obama a "green light" it seems to give Israel a "green light" for more of the usual. Nice to have friends in high places.
The press is a lap-dog, so why it doesa anything depends on whose "lap" is active.
Why he WAS ousted? I dunno. The government must be filled, FILLED, with people (mostly men?) having affairs. So why him? Is having an affair a sort of pre-signed letter of resignation? If so, who put the "letter" into effect?
Why Petraeus should have been ousted? Because he fomented war with Iran (per USA's neocons and Israel's government).
Ray McGovern says: "MCGOVERN: Well, if you look at Afghanistan alone, you know, he kept saying, there's progress, there's great progress. But it's fragile and it's reversible. So, you know, if I'm no longer commanding the forces there, it could become reversible. Okay? He comes back and heads up the CIA. And then what do you see him doing? Supporting his favorite war in Afghanistan, and even more, trying to gin up more opposition to Iran by creating the kind of "intelligence" (in quotes) that Dick Cheney and George Tenet used to create.
I remember it was just a couple of years ago he was in Iraq at the time, maybe five years ago, and Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came and announced to the press Petraeus has found a whole cache of Iranian-supplied, freshly supplied weaponry right outside Baghdad here, and in just ten days he's going to have—bring you out there and show you. Guess what? Nothing happened. They cancelled the press conference because there were no Iranian freshly supplied weapons. Petraeus likes to make stuff up, okay? And that's really not what you should be doing, either as a general or as the head of the CIA. * * *
MCGOVERN: That is very unusual, and it's guesswork on my part. But I think it's true he probably went to Jim Clapper, who is the director of national intelligence, who says, you know, I've got this problem, okay. Maybe I should resign. And my notion of what Clapper said: I think that's probably a good idea under the circumstances. Now they're glad to get rid of him. They want to have a rapprochement or at least some direct contacts with Iran, without these neocons represented by Petraeus backbiting behind him. They want to—."
That's telling 'em. They (non-poor so-called conservatives) insist on thinking that what they get from the government is not a "handout" but what the poor get, if they get anything, is a "handout".
In fact, as generally used, "conservative" means conserving the privileges and advantages that folks have acquired over the years -- whether fairly or unfairly, whether deserved or not, whether "good for the country" or not. It means "I've got mine -- often from the government or with its help -- and it's up to you to get yours."
Let one hundred flowers bloom, let every idea for non-fossil fuels be tried.
But there are NON-FLOWERS. FOSSIL-FUELS are non-flowers and we should be weaning ourselves from them as fast as possible: for fuels for cars, airplanes, home and building heating and cooling, for plastics-manufacture and other manufactures from petroleum feed-stocks (if these contribute to global warming).
High-mileage cars would be nice, but if they burn gasoline they are (also) a no-no. More and better public transport would be preferable. WE MUST CHANGE OUR HABITS AND REDUCE OUR POPULATIONS.
If a strong policy of no-more-fossil-fuel development (or use) can be spoken (President Obama, are you listening?) the value of OIL RESERVES and GAS RESERVES and COAL RESERVES might plummet, the prices of these fuels might rise, and the economic-impetus (aka market forces) to find alternatives would be in place.
Yes, the Middle East is still there, some of it overtly two-sidedly violent (which you've mentioned), some of it only one0sidedly violent (Israel/Palestine).
But global warming is FAR, FAR, FAR more important (and far less attended to). Seems both a short-term economic thing oligarchic industrial groups refuse to stop the fossil fuel game and a psychological thing (people cannot easily see themselves as the villain).
And so, as someone says, Americans should vote for Obama (who will merely stomp on our foot) rather than for Romney (who will cut it off at the ankle without anaesthetic).
Be kinda nice to get big money (corporate and personal, BIG-OIL, BIG-KOCH, BIG-ADELSON, AIPAC, BIG-COAL, BIG-PHARMA, etc. etc. etc.) out of politics (out of advertising, out of campaign contributing, out of lobbying).
With our two BIG PROBLEMS now well known -- [1] climate change now (post-SANDY) known to the many as well as to the few, and [2] big-money-in-politics known to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear -- THEN WHAT?
Is there a GALILEO or a MARTIN LUTHER in the house to usher in big change, or are we doomed to be led by those anointed by the short-sighted prophets of short-term greed?
"Someone MIGHT be a militant." "And you kill him" with a $$$ drone. Doing favors for BIG-ARMS's drone-sales group! Cheaper than a USA death-penalty with all those pesky appeals? And no-one to ask (and no one need answer) the questions: "An IMPORTANT militant?" "A DANGEROUS militant?" "How dangerous?" "Will this drone-attack create more enemies than it kills?" "Oh, just a MIGHT BE a militant?"
It doesn't matter. Drone-sales up. Power to the joy-stick-boys up ("joy stick" indeed!).
The oligarchy of the BIGs (BIG-BANKS, BIG-OIL, BIG-ARMS, etc.) is well entrenched. Obama has backed down before it in many ways. Capitalist Dictatorship is well on its way already.
HOWEVER, Romney seems to welcome it (and the lying typical of Republicans in recent years makes it seem a party thing), welcomes power at any cost (and dishonesty is NOT counted as a cost).
The near-ban on calling Israel an "apartheid state" is a rule for the USA only, to make USA's Jews feel comfortable (where, if they knew the truth, and if the truth were loudly spoken, they would feel uncomfortable). AIPAC doesn't care much what happens (or what is said) inside Israel, but inside the USA, he rules are obviously -- some would say properly -- different.
What Egypt can do -- and so can the USA and every other UN member -- is promote a draft UNSC resolution (with the same demand as UNSC 465 (1980) that Israel remove settlers and settlement buildings) BUT backed up by a call for sanctions (perhaps similar to those now in place against IRAN) until Israel comply fully (or publish a schedule for compliance within a short time certain and stick to it).
It is very hard for me to believe that ANY diplomatic act done in the name of HONORING a countries obligations under Fourth Geneva Convention could run counter to another peace treaty.
Timing is important. November 7 sounds like the day to do it.
I used to think that a rule against murder (of a person actually born) was a rule with a secular purpose, that purpose being to allow all persons actually born to lead their lives with little fear of being murdered and allowing their friends and families likewise to live free of a fear of such a murder.
Now I'm not sure. A baby doesn't fear being murdered, and the rule saves the baby no fear. Of course it could save the parents and other relatives from some fear.
But what of people who view the foetus as alive and fear that it might be "murdered" by abortion? Would not such fear justify a "secular" rule against abortion?
I fear it's all merely a matter of legal line-drawing. I draw the line at born-alive-and-drew-breathe. But I recognize that others draw the line elsewhere.
Global Warming may bring us many of these horrors, but a good deal more slowly. Sadly, mankind is much better (quicker, that is) at fighting/reacting to sudden or immediate (perceived) threats than long-range ones.
Meanwhile, keep a bathtub filled with water and a lot of canned food against the day the whole system breaks down. But perhaps not. There'll be other people out there suffering as much as you are, and they'll have guns. This is America after all.
Many people have signed promises not to reveal government secrets which they might subsequently learn in the course of (government-related, often defence-related) employment.
In some sense they "signed" (acquiesced voluntarily) to requirements of an official secrets act.
It now appears that all people are required by laws (I know little about these laws) not to reveal government secrets of which they become aware by any means whatsoever, not
necessarily via employment relating to government
secrets, not necessarily after signing promises to keep secrets, and not even necessarily voluntarily.
Here we read how people who become aware of government
secrets MOST UNWILLINGLY may be forbidden to reveal those
secrets.
How wonderful are the ways of law and (perhaps) justice!
"it was from the beginning absolutely impossible for US troops to remain in Iraq legally."
Legally? Has "legality" been a predominant (or any sort of) American government concern? Fourth Geneva Convention and Palestine and Israel's illegal settlers, settlements, and wall? American drone attacks on our ally (and nuclear-armed super-giant, rivalling even Iran) Pakistan? Legality and American use of torture (under Bush and Obama)?
I've got nothing against a concern for legality. I preach legality, a/k/a rule of Law. But while I think it may sometimes be an American (people) concern, I don't think it is an American government concern.
All this talk about Iran! Gee, I clean forgot about all those settlements, and their illegality, and UNSC 465 (1980) demanding that Israel remove all settlers and dismantle all settlements. Yup, I was so distracted it clean slipped my mind.
Is it possible that Israel, SO BUSY expressing fear of Iran, could ALSO be doing something shameful and wants to prevent anyone's talking about it?
John Canddidy: Politicians, contrary to official civics-lessons democratic theory (do they still bother to teach "civics"?) are also paid shills (think "campaign contributions" and other bribe-like payments),
I object to Geller's characterizing Israel as "civilized". while its universities and theaters and orchestras and such like may well be "civilized" its vastly militarized society and military/police so overwhelm the "civilized" as to put it in the company of "police states" (even out-doing the USA), and (by my reckoning) a police state is not "civilized".
Even if Israel "must" be a police state" because of the dangers of its "dangerous neighborhood", one must always recall that Israel CHOSE to enter this neighborhood via terrorism and war; this was by no means forced upon Israel. And the neighborhood is dangerous (for Israel) BECAUSE of Israel's initial terror/war - based takeover of Palestine and its continuing expansion and expansive war-making.
Unless permanent criminality (maintaining oneself by illegal force) can be called civilized, Israel is not and has never been civilized.
Don't know if the 47% are frequent voters, But now we have new language, we had "99%" for a while and now "47%".
Fear is that the republican base and independents will be swayed by this HUGE increase in the number of supposed welfare cheats (or whatever Romney means this "47%" to be perceived as), and they p[robably DO vote.
As to USA, "a decisive nail in the coffin of his sputtering campaign" seems to assume a "sputtering campaign" which I would hope for but do not yet see. Still, from your mouth to God's ear.
Thanks for making these points. Scary that absolutist ("fundamentalist") USA clerics have been able to influence Islamic clerics and drag them into more-intolerant positions.
I would never suggest, broadly, that being pregnant is at all like having cancer, but each involves having a somewhat alien life-form growing within one's body, and a rule absolutely forbidding removal of a cancer would seem as evil to most people (even to fundamentalist men) as a rule forbidding removal of a diseased fetus (or a fetus whose birth threatens the woman's life) seems to many people, including non-fundamentalist men.
How does Israel/Palestine figure? Why have not Russia and China proposed hard anti-occupation resolutions in UNSC? Is it just that they don't care? That China has Tibet? That there is no reason to do so except concerns for H/R and I/L and neither Russia nor China (like the USA) cares a fig for either? Might such draft resolutions not show up the USA and EU as supporters of Israeli lawlessness and slow down the nonsense about Iran and Syria?
Efficiency is everything these days. That's why buying the government is so CHEAP! The BIGs have not only legalized oligarchy but made it ridiculously cheap. Quarter of $1B sounds big but is only (only!) $250M, chicken-feed for these bozos.
Really? No abortions in these cases? Guess he is NOT a libertarian (on "choice" anyhow).
And if you believe that the USA makes a nice place for people to get stinking rich WITHOUT HELP FROM GOVERNMENT even from the military, which spends as much money each year as the rest of the world combined, and yet you think that that (very expensive) military is NECESSARY, you might be Paul Ryan (or Barack Obama or anyone else in Washington for that matter).
I have no idea what Mormon elders "teach". In the event they are at odds with pro-Israelism, with hard-right-protestantism, or any of the rest, I sure hope they speak up, though such speaking-up (if duly ignored) might just go to reassure the HR-Protestants that Romney is really with them and not with the Mormons.
President Obama is captured by CIA and DoD. It is, after all, USA's largest bureaucracy, and needs very much to continuously justify its huge annual budget. How could he say no to it? How could he -- in effect -- say "No" to BIG-ARMS and BIG-WAR and BIG-COUNTER-TERRORISM and BIG-ANTI-ISLAM? we're talking serious campaign contributions, here.
QUOTE: "There are certainly plenty of evildoers who wish us ill (primarily but not necessarily in the Greater Middle East)."
Perhaps. But, more important, there are certainly a lot of perfectly decent people in the Greater Middle East who wish us ill (or would like to get us off their backs and out of their backyards) because of the horrors of the wars and drone-attacks we've visited on them.
Did a few New Yorkers (and a lot of middle Americans) wish "ill" on Al-Qa'ida after 9-11? And should we therefore call these American ill-wishers "evildoers"? I think not. Could we have a little nuance, please?
I don't like the language Mr. Bacevich used here, whatever his reason for using it. I respect him greatly. But this usage just adds to the likelihood that the USA's wild, lawless, unconstitutional, and (in my view, also, "evil") war-making will be looked at by the public, if at all, unreflectively.
This article shows -- thanks, Ellen! -- how "crony capitalism" (which I call the oligarchy of the BIGs -- BIG-BANKS, BIG-OIL, BIG-GAS, BIG-COAL, BIG-WAR, BIG-ARMS, BIG-ZION, BIG-PHARMA, and many others) affects Americans "in the small" as well as "in the large".
Unless and until the power of big-money (from corporations but also from wealthy individuals and foundations, etc.) over politics (lobbying and electioneering) is reduced, Americans will not be free of this dreadful system. The dreadful "Citizens United" decision of the business-oriented Supreme Court is not the be-all and end-all, though important.
The annual expenditure of individuals on all political work, cumulatively, should be limited, and the annual spending of non-people (including corporations) should be ZERO.
This is good, but next they should sue under the law which forbids material aid to listed terrorist organizations. (Should have done it already when they did NDAA). Why?
Because telling the story presented by a terrorist organization (or by one of its members) in public might be construed by the USA as giving material support. And off you fly to jail.
Even if (by blatant selective prosecution) the USA has not prosecuted Giuliani and Dean and others for their support for MEK, they have prosecuted others and have prevented lawyers from giving legal advice to listed organizations which sought to get un-listed. This is the project (for MEK) which Giuliani et al. have been working on. the "material support" law is scary and seems (to me) unconstitutional, or at least un-American.
A USA which could withhold money could also withhold its UNSC veto, vastly more important. therefore, ipso facto, QED, neither will happen. (After all, what's special about today?)
My guess? Romney senses that his being a Mormon is (for some Americans) to be an unacceptable outsider and thinks -- possibly correctly -- that he can repair that flaw by asserting partisanship in a BIG FIGHT against another and larger group of "unacceptable outsiders" whom he evidently thinks of as those BAAAD Muslims.
Since Americans are as silly and certainly as badly informed as Romney, he may be right to adopt this position -- by the measure of electoral prospects.
Sadly, Obama -- needing to maintain support for his wars and to shuffle-off suggestions that he is himself a Muslim -- is unlikely to do much necessary re-education of Americans.
I once heard a story about a prolific H/R author and professor at Harvard who applied to the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute to become a student. They refused him, saying that his work for humanity was too valuable for him to stop it or interrupt it by studying (or, presumably, practicing) psychoanalysis.
IMO, your work here is that valuable. Many people have noticed that you are here. So, Yale?
The secrecy/security claims of the US DoD and administrations of both major parties -- with prosecutions going forward without normal evidence and cross-examination of government witnesses, and citizen (and non-citizen) claims against the government thrown out for alleged "secrecy/security" reasons are destroying justice in the USA and turning us into a standard-model totalitarian state.
Glad to see that at least some of this trial is going forward in UK.
jo6pac -- we may not be our brother's keeper, but we are all human and will be succeeded by the next generations, whether they are our kids or not.
There is much to deplore. Global Warming is the biggest. Oligarchy in USA (government by large corporations) is another and deeply intertwined with the first. Fascism, the secrecy-state, the security-state, the anti-terrorist-state, and the imperialist-state (making wars which to others must seem the way terrorism seems to us) -- are all reasons to wish and act for change.
Drones like other military technology must be seen at least in part -- though I'd say primarily -- as a means for the manufacturer to induce the USA (or other warrior) to spend lots of money with that particular manufacturer.
Of course, guided missiles and aircraft are far more expensive and make for more money for their mfrs per item, but the USA buys fewer of them (I'd suppose).
NOTE: the mfr doesn't care if the use of the drones is legal or useful or even helps USA-imperialist aims, and the military folks who plump for using them have an eye on lucrative post-military employment.
Researchers measure significant changes in plant communities across European mountain ranges
Global warming is diminishing species diversity across many mountain ranges in Europe at a dizzying pace. A continent-wide study showed measurable changes in plant communities just within a decade, according to a study led by the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of Vienna.
Apart from America's and much of the world's pay-to-play politics (I call it oligarchy) whereby BIG-OIL "owns" USA's energy policy -- there is also the problem of the short attention horizons of elected politicians. They see re-election in 2 or 4 or 6 years as a real issue, but do not see the problems of food/water/weather in 50/100 years as part of their proper concern. In that sense, the possibility of re-election produces a sort of institutional CORRUPTION in favor of big campaign contributors, of course, but also in favor of immediate (short time-line) issues.
"No Relection" was once, I believe, part of a Mexican political slogan. If it were a rule of law everywhere, elected politicians would be free to accept money and then double-cross the donors -- free of punishment in a subsequent round. But if the public doesn't demand government action on long-term problems, even single-term elected officials would not turn to the real business of humanity.
This is important for us all to consider: "“Nuclear energy is expected to become once again a primary source of energy, with the rising demand for oil and gas and the ensuing increase in the prices, which incidentally can sharply accelerate for any political provocation. We should add to this the concerns about the environment, and the world will have no alternative but to revert back to nuclear energy, at least for decades to come… ”
(Description of Source: Tehran IRNA (Internet Version-WWW) in English — official state-run news agency) … "
I had a friend who was/is a physicist who promoted nuclear power as against coal power because he saw the effluents of nukes as preferable to those of coal. This was before global warming was "announced". I'd go, instead, for wind and solar power (and a much reduced world population (over time) because of the dangers/difficulties of permanent/temporary storing wastes adn the dangers of accidents and deliberate disruption of nuclear power plants.
But Iran's statement bears wide repeating and discussion.
Brutality is grotesque (in the so-called Light to the Nations, or anywhere else) but since it is vastly present in Israeli-controlled-territories to the point that its purveyors cannot judge the difference between more-visible foreigners and less-visible Palestinians (sometimes called "Natives" !), it is good that it happened to a Dane.
Now to get the Danes and Germans to get a tiny bit of reality to balances their FP based on guilt and pity.
"As for taqiyya, or pious dissimulation, it is widely misrepresented by Muslim-haters and does not apply in Khamenei’s case."
HOWEVER THAT MAY BE, it appears that lying to the American public is a standard operating procedure of certain "neocons" who learned it as a preferred technique from Prof. Leo Strauss, who advocated use of the so-called Noble Lie in politics.
So, even if true, why pick SELECTIVELY on Iranians?
You write, "The MEK was then and is now on the US State Department’s terrorism watch list, so the Pentagon’s deployment of this group was quite illegal." Well, possibly not illegal if the government is doing it, who knows what the statute says and what the courts say?
More to the point, the government alone may prosecute the crimes of terrorism, and the government has definitively shown a practice of prosecuting -- to the hilt -- Muslims who aid Hamas-related hospitals but declining to prosecute American "notables" who aid the MEK.
Prosecutorial discretion is the key to the "rule of MEN" rather than the "rule of LAW".
Darkly comic? Charlie Chaplin would have loved it? The Little Torturer?
OTOH, maybe the Polish government will reveal the CIA figures involved (and their own!). That would place the USA in the position of being (along, of course, with, as I suppose, USSR, China, Israel, much of Middle East and Africa, etc., officially opposing torture whilst continuing to do it and continuing to protect those who do it and who did it -- all while the law forbids/forbade it.
On second thoughts, Chaplin might have made it funny.
Then, for an encore, he could have had us convulsing in the aisles over jokes about the USA, China, et al., nearly completely ignoring climate change -- see the head lines now -- "Bigger than the Holocaust!", "Bigger than Stalin's murder of 30 million Ukrainians!", "Coming soon to theaters near you, the now-inescapable effects of formerly preventable climate change!".
Why complain about a little measly torture? But why are they spinning their wheels on torture (or terrorism) when the world has REAL problems?
But we (or some of us) DO want out guns! And we (or some of us) want our bigotry! What else have we got?
Especially if we are poor and being trampled under the corporate foot and have no hope that our ideological political party (Republican -- because it respects "family values" such as gun-totin' and bigotry, unlike them Dems) will do anything for us (except, perhaps, "hear our anger") -- we jes' gotta keep our guns and our bigotry, or we'd really have nothing!
My take is that no-one requires a Sikh to take a hard-hat job. It's his choice. If he does take such a job, he should comply with the law and wear a hard-hat. (For all I know, it is not only a matter of his own safety, but perhaps also the safety of others.)
No-one requires [one or] several Catholics to establish a hospital or a university. It's their choice. If they do so, they must comply with the law. FURTHERMORE, such an institution is NOT a religious institution, even if staffed entirely with Catholics. Any more than a town would become a religious institution if all its citizens/residents were Catholics.
To be devoid of unbelief and of religion [belief].
The sound of one hand clapping. Doing by not doing. Many people seem to have grasped this, this bottle of wine.
So many years ago and already the 1% v 99% !! We have plenty of nothing, they have plenty of plenty. To say nothing of plenty of political power (which, today, is a commodity almost everywhere, price on a bar-code).
One Republican candidate may have a Mexican heritage, but they all are human beings (or at least have a human-being heritage), and the anti-people, anti-women, anti-poor, etc. attitudes -- proudly trumpeted -- seem to me as contrar7y to THAT heritage. But, then, I am an old guy who grew up when FDR was a fairly people-friendly Democrat 9even tho rich himself -- showing it could be done if the politician were humane).
I have read (and believe) that the disciples of many major religious teachers (Christ, Buddha come to mind, perhaps Moses) recognized that something major had happened but didn't really understand it. The disciples all felt the imperative to teach, to convert, to carry forward the mystery -- but because they didn't understand it, they corrupted the message and taught what they COULD understand.
Hence, I suppose, heaven and hell. And "holy" war. And anti-gay.
Joey: As I understand it, most/many Israeli Jews feel absolved of the need to be "moral" by fear (carefully kept "vibrant" by constant propaganda) of annihilation in "another Holocaust". By this argument, "morality" is something for comfortable people, but not something which Israelis (so vulnerably vulnerable!) can afford to be concerned with.
A lot of American Jews seem to feel the same way. Strangely, neither of these groups is even slightly comforted by the huge size and equipment of the Israeli military apparatus, often said to be the FOURTH LARGEST IN THE WORLD.
On the other hand, many USA Jews (I am one) believe in morality and also international law. We don't participate in the fear-induced-knee-jerk-warlike-ideations of those I described.
However, they (and not we) seem to occupy the "seats of power" in the USA's Jewish communities today.
Of course, Hezbollah's promise/thret is just a form of smoke, since Iran has already been attacked many, many times on the nuclear issue. Not with airplanes or guided missiles, I suppose, perhaps with drone-airplanes.
I suppose that "keep them guessing" is always a good practice in brinkmanship.
Why cannot the "greens" in this map get up on their hind legs and do something about ending the Israeli occupations of the Golan Heights and, oh yes, Gaza and the West Bank including (said for clarity) occupied East Jerusalem?
You know, just by speaking truth to power (USA, anglophone pro-settler-colonial commonwealth, and EU) about international law and human rights?
Would it help to say, "Hurry up, please, it's time!"?
Who pays the piper calls the tune. The elephant in the cartoon is whistling HaTikva.
AIPAC & Co. have captured the Republicans -- with much help from pro-Israel fundamentalist evangelicals who wish for a Middle-East war to cause, in approved Biblically predicted style, the end of the world of which it appears they are existentially tired -- and so, like most of the Democrats, the Republicans are now "representing" Israeli rather than American interests.
When they are not "representing" BANK and OIL interests rather than "American" interests.
Be fun if OBAMA would give a very public speech, lay out a realistic scenario (as Ron Paul sort of did) about CONSEQUENCES of war and a mumble-or-two about national-debt and war-costs, especially for wars-of-choice (aka illegal aggressive wars); but the Republicans in the audience are unlikely to agree: see The Republican Brain: Why Even Educated Conservatives Deny Science -- and Reality
Excellent. Total agreement. What big money (aggravated by Citizens United) has done to USA politics is to create a HEREDITARY ARISTOCRACY of the wealthy corporations and wealthy individuals (hate to say "persons" any more!). An aristocracy because they are overwhelmingly powerful. Hereditary because that wealth passes along, year after year, in the same corporations adn same families.
Shortening campaigns, though, steps on free press (if radio and TV are "press") and on "free speech". even if occicial FCC-type campiagns are one-month long, nothing would preclude KOCH- and ADELSON-types from buying high-priced "time" outside that period.
If the Iraq war was fought to protect and enrich multi-national corporations, not especially USA tax-payers, many not USA-corporations in any sense, all with non-USA shareholders, then, One Must Ask:
Hmm. (non-poetic form): Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen. (Ludwig Wittgenstein) (roughly: what cannot be spoken of must be the subject of silence).
MK: Some discussion has it that India and China are cutting back on Iran oil due to caution (not USA pressure); caution because the madness of USA-Israel might bring about a war or otherwise cut off, even briefly, the normal flow of Iranian oil.
Maybe that's what the "war talk" is for, anyhow, to scare buyers of Iranian oil. But, isn't cutting down on buyers for Iranian oil the equivalent of reducing world oil supply and driving prices up? (BIG-OIL might like that, of course, but who else?)
"Israel and its media agents in the United States have expended enormous resources in attempting to convince the US public that the Iranian leadership is made up of mad mullahs obsessed with the end of the world who would gleefully light the nuclear match that brought about an apocalypse."
What have these Israeli save-the-world-from-apocalypse fellas got to say about the USA's end-times evangelicals who support Israel IN ORDER to bring on the end of the world?
The pressure of the world is pressing in on everyone -- economic, political, environmental, populational. People who suffer are turning to fundamentalism as if it really offered help. Islamic fundamentalism we decry, Christian fundamentalism we (some of us) praise, and Jewish fundamentalism we cannot find words to pronounce -- as it takes us to war after war.
As to FDR: "During the campaign Roosevelt often flayed the capitalists, whose power had "become so disproportionate as to dry up purchasing power within any other group. . . . It is a proper concern of the Government to use wise measures of regulation which will bring this purchasing power back to normal."3 In another speech, he said that "if the process of concentration goes on at the same rate, at the end of another century we shall have all American industry controlled by a dozen corporations, and run by perhaps a hundred men. Put plainly, we are steering a steady course toward economic oligarchy, if we are not there already. (http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/franklin-roosevelt-and-the-greatest-economic-myth-of-the-twentieth-century/)
Is this the long-awaited prediction of the end of easy oil (30 years out at VERY MOST) or is this just another in the long, long, long chain of predictions of the end of easy oil. (I am not a fan of oil, having become a Global warming cultist.) Tar sands, here we come! Ugleeeee.
Agreed. You should have refrained from printing the sensible speech (as also the nonsensical Santorum). REFRAIN, OH! REFRAIN! Americans might (by accident) read your blog and we have been trained not to appreciate long sense, but oly short and emotional nonsense.
I prefer Juan's "take" to most that I've read on "who dun it." The world has long known anonymous assassination. And has long known back-flag operations (and even an anonymous "op" can be "black-flag" if the actor publicly blames someone else). Oh, for the comforting old days when those who sent in the bombers proudly announced their claim for responsibility.
Today, Israel and the USA have upped the ante, so to speak, in the anonymous sweepstakes, with DRONES which are (at least potentially) capable of anonymous destructive action.
The fog-of-war is getting ever foggier. Perhaps that's what we can learn from recent events.
Is this a pre-global-warming lament? It seems to speak of doing the usual things that people do -- without responsibility or higher purpose.
Lobsters and snakes can live for a while without their skins/shells and regularly shed them. It is a bit odd for (much of) mankind to be shedding its skin/shell, where we have no experience getting a new one.
Juan, I like the idea of civil-BDS warming up in Europe to the point that the governments feel obliged to overcome whatever (very strong and corrupt) pro-Israel feelings have prevented them (in 44 years) from taking action w.r.t. the evils of the CONDUCT adn (after 44 years also the EXISTENCE) of the occupation.
But why do we have to wait for a military trigger? What exactly is it that disempowers Europe to adopt strong state-BDS right now, today, as a pre-emptive strike against Israel's widely-trumpeted anti-Iran planning, especially as the "excuse" or "provocation" of the occupation has been with us for 44 years and is getting worse day by day?
What is happening in Syria is a horrible tragedy; I hope that this death-producing revolution is not primarily a USA-CIA project.
As to BRIC, one wonders why BRIC do not put forward a regime-change (or at least an anti-occupation) resolution on Israel w.r.t. its occupation of Palestine so that the world can compare the USA's support for often-deadly illegalities with Russia's and China's support for Syria's deadly counter-revolution. Could even the NYT refuse to publish them side-by-side?
I hadn't heard about Portugal. I had heard that Spain was pretty far along toward using renewables. (USA in rear-guard, refusing to modernize anything except weapons-systems).
These numbers seem to be about electricity. Does that include building-heating (if needed in those countries), building-cooling? It surely does not (yet) cover road-traffic, air-traffic, water-traffic, though it migh cover train-traffic.
Is there a web-site showing all this stuff, and showing annual changes (aka progress, regress)?
Yes, a carbon tax, to be sure. But ALSO: get governments at all levels to commit to purchasing ALL their electric power from wind-solar-green by 2020. This would greatly boost green production, and also R&D becaus a market could be predicted.
We spent something like $1T for all our so-called wars on terror. And the president said recently that TERRORISM is the nation's biggest threat.
If he'd start saying that GW/CC is the biggest threat and spend $1T on energy R&D and on actually building some solar-arrays in Nevada or some other sunny place, we'd see some progress.
I concur in Juan's veryy pessimistic reading of USA's political system. The oligarchs aren't going to give up, and only a strict Constitutional Amendment (against corporate and other Fat Cat political spending) is likely to rescue the planet.,
One might hope thqat a paper like the New York Times would neither ignore this story nor report it misleadingly.
I believe that NYT did the latter.
If all news media were run (supported) by small contributions from people interested in "the news" and there was no big-money ownership and also no big-money advertising, then "the news" would have a cha nce to be reported "as if people matter".
But oligarchic control of the media (as also of government, of course) make the population tools of businesss, and remove the knowledge necessary for outrage.
Israel could -- with lots of solar power -- make desalinized water in quantity and SUPPLY Gazas and WB instead of stealing water from them.
But that goes exactly contrary to the Zionist desire to acquire land without people.
It would be good for peace adn for human rights.
Israel has (it seems to me) no interest in either where Palestine is concerned.
RD Sultan: There is an alternative, in principle, namely, that the nations overcome pressure against H/R work on Palestine and apply real pressure on the State of israel, on its economy as a whole, with the goal of getting israel to remove all settlers, demolish th4 wall and all the settlements (buildings). Likelihood today? Small. But what is the likelihood, today, of anything other than continued apartheid?
It is possible that these people why say they believe (whatever) actually do believe it. Could be. why not? Strict upbringing may condition a person to believe anything -- including what local religious leaders tell him the Bible says. And he will not inquire (or hear) what ELSE the Bible says. You betcha.
so, it is possible. But it is also possible that some politicians are just saying what the oligarchs (BIG-OIL, BIG-BANKs, BIG-DEFENSE, etc) want them to say. Congress, after all gets a small salary from the USa but a LARGE CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION from the oligarchs and they know which side their bread is buttered on.
We are SEEING the effects of climate change daily. But these fellow have eyes but will not see. (Check the Bible on that one.) trees dying in colorado and opints north from beetles which nio longer die in cold winterse because winters are no longer cold enough. Ethiopia drying out. Crop failures. water failures. Arctic ice melting.
Oh well.
Capitalism is indeed marching forward (or at least onward). There are two troubles with capitalism these days. One is the things that companies do AS commercial companies. Pollute, deny Labor rights, etc.
The other is use small bits of their enormous wealth to buy/rent politicians (via bribes, campaign contributions, revolving-door arrangements, jobs-for-relatives, etc). This last means that democracy (where formally available) is a vanishing thing.
What this presages for "speaking truth to power" ius hard to say with precision but easy to predict in general terms: what "gwets said" or "gets published" is likely to be what the corporations want it to be. see The-biological-structure-called-humankind-has-gone-haywire.php
I wrote about the substitution of "oligarchy" (the rule of the BIGs -- BIB-BANKS, BIG-OIL, BIG-DEFENSE, etc.) here: The biological structure called “humankind” has gone haywire.
Let these sanctions fall. Yes. But I still "carry a torch" for sanctions (the "S" in "BDS") agaisnt Israel to compel Israel to remove the settlers, demolish the wall and the settlements (yes!) (per UNSC 465 (1980)) and to lift the siege on Gaza.
THOSE sanctions -- if they ever eventuate -- should remain in place (if initially imposed) until the tasks assigned are completed.
Would Iran, if admitted to the halls of power, demand something "real" for Palestine, or merely get on board the USA's and Israel's "let them eat nothing" Marie Antoinette imitation?
The idea of Iran's getting Hezbollah to tone itself down is a mysterious idea for me -- probably because I don't know what Hezbollah does. I thoight it was a defensive army whose business was to punish Israel the next time Israel attacks Lebanon. What'm I missing?
Moreover, if USA is satisfied that Iran is not working toward bombs and lifts sanctions, and Israel THEN acts by aggressive warfare against Iran, the realization openly-acknowledged today that Israel (and not Iran) is the loose cannon in the region will be so strong that movement toward sanctions on Israel (say w.r.t. settlements) will grow.
Wonder if Bibi is thinking about that?
Dust to dust, the sooner the quicker, is the Christian way, I guess, to hear some of these soi-dissant "Christians" tell it. Whereas trying to help people (with food, medicine, education, housing, jobs, etc.) is the work of ??? the devil ???. No, no! "Love thy neighbor" is a directive as to feeling (alone), not to action. "Charity" is a directive tio feeling alone, not to action.
I do wish that the less punitive, less denying, "Christians" would stand up and preach a generous, helping Christianity a little louder, a little more publicly, than they seem to do.
Jews and Muslims and all the otehrs, too.
There are many environmentally-conscious people in USA and elsewhere who feel (if my own feelings are a guide) FRUSTRATED that the many environmental organizations to not unite to make opposing global warming a SINGLE FOCUS of environmental action.
Instead, one organization wishes to save whales or polar bears, another some other endangered species, or promote or oppose nuclear power, etc., THERE IS NO SINGLE UNITED MESSAGE.
Perhaps Greenpeace can negotiate WITHIN the environmental movement to energize such a SINGLE-CONSCIOUSNESS-OF-PURPOSE.
After all, action on limate change is opposed (it seems) by all the major corporations, and it is these corporations which appear to "rule the world", not the citizens of democracies -- UNLESS the citizens are essentially united.
If the (even the lo-level) guys at NSA have the ability to seek LOVEINT, then they have the ability to search for BLACKMAILINT, just as J Edgar Hoover notoriously did.
In that case, then (even hi-level) guys at NSA thus have the power to seek BLACKMAILINT on government figures including JUDGES and thus to control the entire government -- either in a individually-determined way or in service of an ideology or political group or powerful interest such as KOCH BROS.
To me, THIS is the scandal and the most scary possibility.
Agreed. CLIMATE CHANGE is far more dangerous to the whole human race (and thus to international capitalism in the long run, that is, in the time-frame they do not appear to care about) than TERRORISM, WAR, FAILED ECONOMIES, etc.
BIG MONEY (corporate and private) is "selling the farm" here due to its absolute control of governments and complete lack of concern for human welfare.
The test of racism would be if, for example, and heaven forfend, Palestinian Christians should conduct terrorist acts in the USA. Then we could see if "terrorism" was (in practical terms) defined in terms of religion, skin color, or something else.
If dark-skinned Christians are accused merely as criminals where similarly-acting (as alleged, naturally, we sometimes forget that little nicety, don't we?) light-skinned Muslims are accused of "terrorism", then we'll know it is all about religion.
Not looking forward to finding out.
It seems that harsh sanctions have a dual action, at least against a non-wholly-democratic state (I wonder whether that includes Israel).
First, it persuades the non-democratic state to stiffen its back and resist the sanctions -- rather than comply with them. Or perhaps the sanctions demanded an impossible compliance rather than a merely undesired one.
Second, when the sanctions have failed after a long time to bring the victim regime to its knees, the imosers of the sanctions then feel morally justified to increase the sanctions or to go to war.
What never happens is that the imposers decide that they were wrong to impose (or to increase) the sanctions.
Israel, India, and Pakistan (and perhaps N-Korea) got off easily. Not sure about NK.
I wonder whetehr the sanctions that BDS demands for Israel -- and which the world refuses to provide -- would end the occupation or result in war or something worse (worse than the sanctions, maybe something worse than war).
Well, well -- "well regulated" ? But hold it, cars are dangerous and useful; can they really require training, a test, adn title and tags? Gosh, who knew?
This should be nothing new (though obviously very serious).
While it is a fall-out from GLOBAL WARMING, it is more intrinsically a fall-out from non-action-to-reverse-global-warming, caused by the control over governments of the global giant capitalist corporations and banks (I call them part of the oligarchy) -- see this analysis. The capitalists are wedded to growth adn to growth of use of fossil-fuels and, of coruse, don't give a darn about people, any people.
Climate change is so important a topic -- both intrinsically and because new data comes out frequently such as the very scary Russian melting-permafrost-methane-release -- that EVERY editorialist, EVERY commentator on ANY SUBJECT shoudl be sure to mention climate change possibly as follows:
"THERE ARE NEW DISCOVERIES CONFIRMING MAN-MADE CLIMATE CHANGE EVERY DAY. THERE IS NO MORE IMPORTANT TOPIC FOR DISCUSSION BY ANYONE IN THIS 21st CENTURY".
"Treason" is related to AIDING enemies. USA efforts w.r.t. Iraq did not aid any enemy (unless Al-Qaida), but rather harmed its (new and USA-created) enemy. Does not sound like "treason". But does sound like "war crime", as the USA was neither attacked not threatened. Bush and others should be prosecuted.
Mis-spending USA's money on the war generally and on the mercenaries (Blackwater) and on the re-building (Halliburton) is typical of wars, which are performed in considerable part as a means of enriching "merchants of death"; the absense of any mechanism for accounting and controlling those expenditures seems to me not an accident but rather as proof of this point. All this could be construed as robbery, robbing the USA to enrich the few -- and this would not be the only example.
To my mind this discussion aims at the wrong questions entirely,
If a man is sitting at a cafe drinking coffee and planning an act of war, then he is little different from his brother doing the same thing in Yemen. An act of war is an act of war, and planning is planning. (I am assuming the degree of destruction being planned is the same in each case and has the same likelihood of occurring if not stiffled.)
The BIG ISSUE in my mind is the issue of who determines the dangerousness of the thoughts of guys sitting at cafe's drinkling coffee -- and surrounded by innocent civilians.
If our police departments are not allowed to do preventive arrests (to say nothing of preventive assassinations), then either our rules for police are wrong or our rules for drones are wrong.
Which is it? These are the q
Don't know that Remnick was really predicting the rise of Naftali Bennett. Perhaps (and more usefully) he was SENSITIZING the New Yorker's readers (many of them New York Jews who know they are supposed to support Israel but who are also liberals) that Israel is not the nice-cuddly-teddy-bear that it is sometimes portrayed.
imagine that the people of the USA, generally, were, after so many years, ACTUALLY TO LEARN WHAT ISRAEL IS ABOUT! that may have been Remnick's purpose. DESCRIPTION without apparent judgment.
There is a strong need -- if the DESPERATE URGENCY of opposing climate change be well understood by everyone -- that scientists (who must act cautiously when they act AS scientists) should act robustly when they act AS citizens, abandoning caution as to absolute certainty in favor of caution in face of massive threat and great uncertainty -- including uncertainty of how great the threat is.
I touch on this problem in this essay.
Problem is, that too many Congressmen want to drive their [gas-guzzling, CO2-spewing] SUV's to the fund-raising parties where they can re-fuel for their next campaign on money from BIGs (such as BIG-OIL, BIG-COAL, [BIG-ZION], [BIG-ARMS]).
These Congressmen don't have TIME to learn about (or become fearful about) climate change. They are really, really too busy staying with the program, which means constant fund-raising.
Does that "carbon tax" include a tax on coal extracted from the earth and then sold (e.g., to China)? Just asking, for clarification. Not too good to back off of BURNING fossil fuels but continue to mine and sell the stuff to people who do not have a carbon tax.
I think I'm saying the carbon tax should be world-wide, internationally implemented, uniform, and a tax on PRODUCTION (mining, pumping) fossil-fuels. Where should the tax thereby raised be spent? I guess on developing "green" energy sources world-wide. And not necessarily in the same places that happen to "enjoy" the fossil-fuel reserves.
I love all this ancient history, especially the tantalizing advances of Muslim science which -- it seems -- died out later, as science rose in Europe.
Today, as the USA and China and much of the world IGNORE the science of CLIMATE CHANGE, the whole world is showing itself "unready" or "ill-advised" and much of the Republican party in the USA shows itself to be anti-science, as if wishing the USA to die back (as science in Islam did after 1013).
The history I'd love to read is not the who-won and who-lost, the battles, etc., but the reasons for the advances and retreats toward and away from knowledge, toward and away from freedom (for anybody!), and the like.
If climate-change is the reason for the advance of Europe and the retreat of Islam (as it was for the retreat of the Central-American Mayans and the North-American Anasazi -- then shouldn't we REALLY be talking about that?
Indians
See this Hawaiian web-site for similar thoughts.
This web-site also asks about the USA storing DEPLETED URANIUM in Hawaii:
On Wednesday, Dec. 12, 2012, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) held a meeting with the U.S. Army about whether to grant the Army a “License to Possess” Depleted uranium (DU) in Hawaii at Schofield Barracks on Oahu and the Pohakuloa Training Area (PTA) on Hawaii island. The meeting, instead of being held in Hawaii, was held in Maryland. The public could listen by phone to the 2 and 1/2 hour meeting and ask questions for 1/2 hour after the meeting ended. While no formal decision was made, the writing is on the wall. A license will be granted to the Army. The mongoose, once again, will be put in charge of guarding the hen house.
"For the first time, the European Court of Human Rights has found the US Central Intelligence Agency guilty of torturing and sodomizing an innocent man."
Glad he was innocent. But the narrator, valentine, says the court based its judgment on his illegal removal (kidnapping) and torture, not on his innocence.
Good argument, Juan.
This event should also be an opportunity to get Americans -- who have such a kindly reservoir of concern for the psychological health of children -- to contemplate the effects of the USA's 10 years of recent wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, on the children who live there and experience "Newtown" events repeatedly, sometimes daily.
Newtown was the one-off effort of a madman. The wars and their daily carnage are the policy of our elected government. This carnage is very bad for the psychological health of small children, too young to respond by proper and health-promoting anger against the USA.
And Israel does very much the same in Gaza and sometimes in Lebanon. And the USA supports this carnage. It is very bad for the psychological health of small children, too young to respond by proper anger against Israel and the USA.
I don't really expect to see this sort of response, however. Americans do not "see" the victims of our wars, nor do we (mostly) see our wars as crimes.
Couldn't the directors and officers be sued individually for illegal acts (for failing to act properly as fiduciaries)? And how would they defend themselves -- with a Twinkies defense?
USA surely helps get immunity and impunity for Israel and its leaders. No question. And the failure of EU and others to act may be due in large part to USA pressure (as well as to laziness, economic ties, and AIPAC-like political pressure activity).
However, IMO all that is needed to reverse the occupation (and end the settlements and so forth) is for a sufficient number of countries to make clear law-based and human-rights-based demands (removal of all settlers and dismantling of the wall and of all settlements has long seemed to be the proper demand) and then to seek to enforce their demands by (preferably concerted) sanction activity.
But the key is ACTION. Israel has shown for 64 years that it knows that "talk is cheap" and it has never responded to what I call "mere words". Read UNSC 465 (1980), an example of the UNSC saying the right things but as "mere words", that is, without enforcement sanctions.
I have been assuming that storm/drought was the more immediate path of climate-change-destructiveness with concomitant crop loss (for both reasons). I don't know much, just scared. Also I am worried about "tipping points" (strong feedbacks that promise massive and irreversible changes) such as the melting of arctic permafrosts -- thereby releasing untold amounts of CO2 and CH4 (methane) which will make the greenhouse contributions of humankind (mostly the technological "west") seem trivial in comparison.
The refusal of the BIGs to admit the reality of climate change argues a severe lack of knowledge and a belief that there is lots of time left to respond so as to limit the damage.
The most severe lack of knowledge is the belief that things could not be worse than the cautious scientific community has assured us. The scientists have been cautious out of ordinarily commendable reluctance to say more than they know for certain (e.g. with high probability). But what they don't know "for sure" can be very bad indeed.
This vimeo video does not show up on my browser page (Firefox on Ubuntu - Linux). (Sigh.)
Has anyone been monitoring the temperature inside the CAN that they keep kicking down the road?
Do the world's politicians hate the big-money folk so much that they want to incinerate THEM -- as well, of course, as the rest, remainder, and residue of unimportant, negligible, miserable folk, which is to say, US -- by this entirely predictable and increasingly unavoidable, irremediable tragedy?
I only call it a "tragedy" because I have a fondness for the music of Beethoven, Bach, Brahms, Mozart, Mendelssohn, etc., which is unlikely to survive when most of the human race has been treated to an Israel-trashes-Gaza sort of embrace.
Whatever happened to: WHAT GOD HAS PUT TOGETHER LET NO MAN PUT ASUNDER?
I'd like to think (but do not believe) that Obama -- lusting in his heart -- wants to do the decent thing as his Cairo speech suggests, and is looking for a way to break AIPAC's stranglehold whilst appearing to cave in to it. So he goes overboard outwardly doing AIPAC's bidding (maybe not secretly, as on Gaza) and the USA and Israel get laughed at in EU and elsewhere and he is happy (inwardly) and goes about other business waiting for the USA to wake up and tell him to behave decently. (Gee, I thought that's what the election was for!)
Mere citizenship is not enough. Can you imagine how Israeli citizenship "rights" would go downhill for Palestinian Arabs if all the exiles of 1948 were "granted" Israeli citizenship and permission to return to somewhere inside "Israel"? It's bad enough today for those who live there. It might not include the right to vote, and, even today, many Palestinian political parties cannot "run" for elections because they do not agree that Israel is "the state of the Jewish people".
My guess is that USA and Israel went along with an unclear agreement to lift the blockade (and a clear agreement against cross border violence by both sides) IN RETURN for an agreement (maybe a side-agreement) by Egypt not to let major weapons into Gaza. What else did Israel (and USA) get out of the agreement (at the cost of honoring Hamas and Egypt's Morsi)?
The problem with a USA government (and Congress) that (perhaps responding solely to AIPAC pressures) is ABSOLUTELY HEARTLESS about Palestinians -- is that heartlessness prevents our noble governing class from attending to other important business which requires "heart" -- such as reversing GLOBAL WARMING.
Kinda hard for these noble Solons to take their blinders off, isn't it?
But they do not object to assassination, blockade (7 years ?), sniping from the border, etc.? And, turning to West Obama and others do not seem to think it worth mentioning that settlers and settlements (buildings on confiscated land) and wall (ditto) are present illegally.
Palestine/Israel is a wilderness, wild, a land outside the law. There is no legal restraint on Israel, no legal recourse for Palestinians. And the USA is the chief implementer. If Obama cares at all, he can only be waiting for Israel to outshine its usual horrible self. (So easy to "go too far" when you're on a roll.)
1948? 1967? 2005 (blockade of Gaza)? The history stretches back and is of no importance to those who (what?) manage current brush fires?
And Egypt and Jordan have given Obama a "green light" it seems to give Israel a "green light" for more of the usual. Nice to have friends in high places.
The press is a lap-dog, so why it doesa anything depends on whose "lap" is active.
Why he WAS ousted? I dunno. The government must be filled, FILLED, with people (mostly men?) having affairs. So why him? Is having an affair a sort of pre-signed letter of resignation? If so, who put the "letter" into effect?
Why Petraeus should have been ousted? Because he fomented war with Iran (per USA's neocons and Israel's government).
Ray McGovern says: "MCGOVERN: Well, if you look at Afghanistan alone, you know, he kept saying, there's progress, there's great progress. But it's fragile and it's reversible. So, you know, if I'm no longer commanding the forces there, it could become reversible. Okay? He comes back and heads up the CIA. And then what do you see him doing? Supporting his favorite war in Afghanistan, and even more, trying to gin up more opposition to Iran by creating the kind of "intelligence" (in quotes) that Dick Cheney and George Tenet used to create.
I remember it was just a couple of years ago he was in Iraq at the time, maybe five years ago, and Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came and announced to the press Petraeus has found a whole cache of Iranian-supplied, freshly supplied weaponry right outside Baghdad here, and in just ten days he's going to have—bring you out there and show you. Guess what? Nothing happened. They cancelled the press conference because there were no Iranian freshly supplied weapons. Petraeus likes to make stuff up, okay? And that's really not what you should be doing, either as a general or as the head of the CIA. * * *
MCGOVERN: That is very unusual, and it's guesswork on my part. But I think it's true he probably went to Jim Clapper, who is the director of national intelligence, who says, you know, I've got this problem, okay. Maybe I should resign. And my notion of what Clapper said: I think that's probably a good idea under the circumstances. Now they're glad to get rid of him. They want to have a rapprochement or at least some direct contacts with Iran, without these neocons represented by Petraeus backbiting behind him. They want to—."
That's telling 'em. They (non-poor so-called conservatives) insist on thinking that what they get from the government is not a "handout" but what the poor get, if they get anything, is a "handout".
In fact, as generally used, "conservative" means conserving the privileges and advantages that folks have acquired over the years -- whether fairly or unfairly, whether deserved or not, whether "good for the country" or not. It means "I've got mine -- often from the government or with its help -- and it's up to you to get yours."
Let one hundred flowers bloom, let every idea for non-fossil fuels be tried.
But there are NON-FLOWERS. FOSSIL-FUELS are non-flowers and we should be weaning ourselves from them as fast as possible: for fuels for cars, airplanes, home and building heating and cooling, for plastics-manufacture and other manufactures from petroleum feed-stocks (if these contribute to global warming).
High-mileage cars would be nice, but if they burn gasoline they are (also) a no-no. More and better public transport would be preferable. WE MUST CHANGE OUR HABITS AND REDUCE OUR POPULATIONS.
If a strong policy of no-more-fossil-fuel development (or use) can be spoken (President Obama, are you listening?) the value of OIL RESERVES and GAS RESERVES and COAL RESERVES might plummet, the prices of these fuels might rise, and the economic-impetus (aka market forces) to find alternatives would be in place.
Yes, the Middle East is still there, some of it overtly two-sidedly violent (which you've mentioned), some of it only one0sidedly violent (Israel/Palestine).
But global warming is FAR, FAR, FAR more important (and far less attended to). Seems both a short-term economic thing oligarchic industrial groups refuse to stop the fossil fuel game and a psychological thing (people cannot easily see themselves as the villain).
And so, as someone says, Americans should vote for Obama (who will merely stomp on our foot) rather than for Romney (who will cut it off at the ankle without anaesthetic).
Be kinda nice to get big money (corporate and personal, BIG-OIL, BIG-KOCH, BIG-ADELSON, AIPAC, BIG-COAL, BIG-PHARMA, etc. etc. etc.) out of politics (out of advertising, out of campaign contributing, out of lobbying).
With our two BIG PROBLEMS now well known -- [1] climate change now (post-SANDY) known to the many as well as to the few, and [2] big-money-in-politics known to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear -- THEN WHAT?
Is there a GALILEO or a MARTIN LUTHER in the house to usher in big change, or are we doomed to be led by those anointed by the short-sighted prophets of short-term greed?
"Someone MIGHT be a militant." "And you kill him" with a $$$ drone. Doing favors for BIG-ARMS's drone-sales group! Cheaper than a USA death-penalty with all those pesky appeals? And no-one to ask (and no one need answer) the questions: "An IMPORTANT militant?" "A DANGEROUS militant?" "How dangerous?" "Will this drone-attack create more enemies than it kills?" "Oh, just a MIGHT BE a militant?"
It doesn't matter. Drone-sales up. Power to the joy-stick-boys up ("joy stick" indeed!).
Juan -- This is an op-ed. Could the NYT, LAT, --SOMEBODY-- be got to print it, or some of it?
The oligarchy of the BIGs (BIG-BANKS, BIG-OIL, BIG-ARMS, etc.) is well entrenched. Obama has backed down before it in many ways. Capitalist Dictatorship is well on its way already.
HOWEVER, Romney seems to welcome it (and the lying typical of Republicans in recent years makes it seem a party thing), welcomes power at any cost (and dishonesty is NOT counted as a cost).
The near-ban on calling Israel an "apartheid state" is a rule for the USA only, to make USA's Jews feel comfortable (where, if they knew the truth, and if the truth were loudly spoken, they would feel uncomfortable). AIPAC doesn't care much what happens (or what is said) inside Israel, but inside the USA, he rules are obviously -- some would say properly -- different.
What Egypt can do -- and so can the USA and every other UN member -- is promote a draft UNSC resolution (with the same demand as UNSC 465 (1980) that Israel remove settlers and settlement buildings) BUT backed up by a call for sanctions (perhaps similar to those now in place against IRAN) until Israel comply fully (or publish a schedule for compliance within a short time certain and stick to it).
It is very hard for me to believe that ANY diplomatic act done in the name of HONORING a countries obligations under Fourth Geneva Convention could run counter to another peace treaty.
Timing is important. November 7 sounds like the day to do it.
One version is on YouTube (and I couldn't see the version on GLOBALGRIND.COM perhaps due to using LINUX O/S).
I used to think that a rule against murder (of a person actually born) was a rule with a secular purpose, that purpose being to allow all persons actually born to lead their lives with little fear of being murdered and allowing their friends and families likewise to live free of a fear of such a murder.
Now I'm not sure. A baby doesn't fear being murdered, and the rule saves the baby no fear. Of course it could save the parents and other relatives from some fear.
But what of people who view the foetus as alive and fear that it might be "murdered" by abortion? Would not such fear justify a "secular" rule against abortion?
I fear it's all merely a matter of legal line-drawing. I draw the line at born-alive-and-drew-breathe. But I recognize that others draw the line elsewhere.
Global Warming may bring us many of these horrors, but a good deal more slowly. Sadly, mankind is much better (quicker, that is) at fighting/reacting to sudden or immediate (perceived) threats than long-range ones.
Meanwhile, keep a bathtub filled with water and a lot of canned food against the day the whole system breaks down. But perhaps not. There'll be other people out there suffering as much as you are, and they'll have guns. This is America after all.
Many people have signed promises not to reveal government secrets which they might subsequently learn in the course of (government-related, often defence-related) employment.
In some sense they "signed" (acquiesced voluntarily) to requirements of an official secrets act.
It now appears that all people are required by laws (I know little about these laws) not to reveal government secrets of which they become aware by any means whatsoever, not
necessarily via employment relating to government
secrets, not necessarily after signing promises to keep secrets, and not even necessarily voluntarily.
Here we read how people who become aware of government
secrets MOST UNWILLINGLY may be forbidden to reveal those
secrets.
How wonderful are the ways of law and (perhaps) justice!
"it was from the beginning absolutely impossible for US troops to remain in Iraq legally."
Legally? Has "legality" been a predominant (or any sort of) American government concern? Fourth Geneva Convention and Palestine and Israel's illegal settlers, settlements, and wall? American drone attacks on our ally (and nuclear-armed super-giant, rivalling even Iran) Pakistan? Legality and American use of torture (under Bush and Obama)?
I've got nothing against a concern for legality. I preach legality, a/k/a rule of Law. But while I think it may sometimes be an American (people) concern, I don't think it is an American government concern.
Just sayin'.
All this talk about Iran! Gee, I clean forgot about all those settlements, and their illegality, and UNSC 465 (1980) demanding that Israel remove all settlers and dismantle all settlements. Yup, I was so distracted it clean slipped my mind.
Is it possible that Israel, SO BUSY expressing fear of Iran, could ALSO be doing something shameful and wants to prevent anyone's talking about it?
Gosh, clever, these Israelis.
John Canddidy: Politicians, contrary to official civics-lessons democratic theory (do they still bother to teach "civics"?) are also paid shills (think "campaign contributions" and other bribe-like payments),
Be nice to get the big money out of politics, more and more clearly every year, but in recent years, all the progress has been in the other direction. See my essay money-in-politics-should-be-political-issue-number-1-for-everyone.
I object to Geller's characterizing Israel as "civilized". while its universities and theaters and orchestras and such like may well be "civilized" its vastly militarized society and military/police so overwhelm the "civilized" as to put it in the company of "police states" (even out-doing the USA), and (by my reckoning) a police state is not "civilized".
Even if Israel "must" be a police state" because of the dangers of its "dangerous neighborhood", one must always recall that Israel CHOSE to enter this neighborhood via terrorism and war; this was by no means forced upon Israel. And the neighborhood is dangerous (for Israel) BECAUSE of Israel's initial terror/war - based takeover of Palestine and its continuing expansion and expansive war-making.
Unless permanent criminality (maintaining oneself by illegal force) can be called civilized, Israel is not and has never been civilized.
Don't know if the 47% are frequent voters, But now we have new language, we had "99%" for a while and now "47%".
Fear is that the republican base and independents will be swayed by this HUGE increase in the number of supposed welfare cheats (or whatever Romney means this "47%" to be perceived as), and they p[robably DO vote.
Fear and hate are great motivators.
Fascinating w.r.t. Middle East.
As to USA, "a decisive nail in the coffin of his sputtering campaign" seems to assume a "sputtering campaign" which I would hope for but do not yet see. Still, from your mouth to God's ear.
Thanks for making these points. Scary that absolutist ("fundamentalist") USA clerics have been able to influence Islamic clerics and drag them into more-intolerant positions.
I would never suggest, broadly, that being pregnant is at all like having cancer, but each involves having a somewhat alien life-form growing within one's body, and a rule absolutely forbidding removal of a cancer would seem as evil to most people (even to fundamentalist men) as a rule forbidding removal of a diseased fetus (or a fetus whose birth threatens the woman's life) seems to many people, including non-fundamentalist men.
How does Israel/Palestine figure? Why have not Russia and China proposed hard anti-occupation resolutions in UNSC? Is it just that they don't care? That China has Tibet? That there is no reason to do so except concerns for H/R and I/L and neither Russia nor China (like the USA) cares a fig for either? Might such draft resolutions not show up the USA and EU as supporters of Israeli lawlessness and slow down the nonsense about Iran and Syria?
Efficiency is everything these days. That's why buying the government is so CHEAP! The BIGs have not only legalized oligarchy but made it ridiculously cheap. Quarter of $1B sounds big but is only (only!) $250M, chicken-feed for these bozos.
Really? No abortions in these cases? Guess he is NOT a libertarian (on "choice" anyhow).
And if you believe that the USA makes a nice place for people to get stinking rich WITHOUT HELP FROM GOVERNMENT even from the military, which spends as much money each year as the rest of the world combined, and yet you think that that (very expensive) military is NECESSARY, you might be Paul Ryan (or Barack Obama or anyone else in Washington for that matter).
I have no idea what Mormon elders "teach". In the event they are at odds with pro-Israelism, with hard-right-protestantism, or any of the rest, I sure hope they speak up, though such speaking-up (if duly ignored) might just go to reassure the HR-Protestants that Romney is really with them and not with the Mormons.
President Obama is captured by CIA and DoD. It is, after all, USA's largest bureaucracy, and needs very much to continuously justify its huge annual budget. How could he say no to it? How could he -- in effect -- say "No" to BIG-ARMS and BIG-WAR and BIG-COUNTER-TERRORISM and BIG-ANTI-ISLAM? we're talking serious campaign contributions, here.
QUOTE: "There are certainly plenty of evildoers who wish us ill (primarily but not necessarily in the Greater Middle East)."
Perhaps. But, more important, there are certainly a lot of perfectly decent people in the Greater Middle East who wish us ill (or would like to get us off their backs and out of their backyards) because of the horrors of the wars and drone-attacks we've visited on them.
Did a few New Yorkers (and a lot of middle Americans) wish "ill" on Al-Qa'ida after 9-11? And should we therefore call these American ill-wishers "evildoers"? I think not. Could we have a little nuance, please?
I don't like the language Mr. Bacevich used here, whatever his reason for using it. I respect him greatly. But this usage just adds to the likelihood that the USA's wild, lawless, unconstitutional, and (in my view, also, "evil") war-making will be looked at by the public, if at all, unreflectively.
This article shows -- thanks, Ellen! -- how "crony capitalism" (which I call the oligarchy of the BIGs -- BIG-BANKS, BIG-OIL, BIG-GAS, BIG-COAL, BIG-WAR, BIG-ARMS, BIG-ZION, BIG-PHARMA, and many others) affects Americans "in the small" as well as "in the large".
Unless and until the power of big-money (from corporations but also from wealthy individuals and foundations, etc.) over politics (lobbying and electioneering) is reduced, Americans will not be free of this dreadful system. The dreadful "Citizens United" decision of the business-oriented Supreme Court is not the be-all and end-all, though important.
The annual expenditure of individuals on all political work, cumulatively, should be limited, and the annual spending of non-people (including corporations) should be ZERO.
This is good, but next they should sue under the law which forbids material aid to listed terrorist organizations. (Should have done it already when they did NDAA). Why?
Because telling the story presented by a terrorist organization (or by one of its members) in public might be construed by the USA as giving material support. And off you fly to jail.
Even if (by blatant selective prosecution) the USA has not prosecuted Giuliani and Dean and others for their support for MEK, they have prosecuted others and have prevented lawyers from giving legal advice to listed organizations which sought to get un-listed. This is the project (for MEK) which Giuliani et al. have been working on. the "material support" law is scary and seems (to me) unconstitutional, or at least un-American.
News Flash (sort of): Frequent flooding of low-lying USA towns,
google >> Norfolk VA and sea level
See 2010 NYT report of sea level rise in Norfolk VA
A USA which could withhold money could also withhold its UNSC veto, vastly more important. therefore, ipso facto, QED, neither will happen. (After all, what's special about today?)
My guess? Romney senses that his being a Mormon is (for some Americans) to be an unacceptable outsider and thinks -- possibly correctly -- that he can repair that flaw by asserting partisanship in a BIG FIGHT against another and larger group of "unacceptable outsiders" whom he evidently thinks of as those BAAAD Muslims.
Since Americans are as silly and certainly as badly informed as Romney, he may be right to adopt this position -- by the measure of electoral prospects.
Sadly, Obama -- needing to maintain support for his wars and to shuffle-off suggestions that he is himself a Muslim -- is unlikely to do much necessary re-education of Americans.
Amen.
Juan:
And, now about that job at Yale * * *
I once heard a story about a prolific H/R author and professor at Harvard who applied to the Boston Psychoanalytic Institute to become a student. They refused him, saying that his work for humanity was too valuable for him to stop it or interrupt it by studying (or, presumably, practicing) psychoanalysis.
IMO, your work here is that valuable. Many people have noticed that you are here. So, Yale?
The secrecy/security claims of the US DoD and administrations of both major parties -- with prosecutions going forward without normal evidence and cross-examination of government witnesses, and citizen (and non-citizen) claims against the government thrown out for alleged "secrecy/security" reasons are destroying justice in the USA and turning us into a standard-model totalitarian state.
Glad to see that at least some of this trial is going forward in UK.
jo6pac -- we may not be our brother's keeper, but we are all human and will be succeeded by the next generations, whether they are our kids or not.
There is much to deplore. Global Warming is the biggest. Oligarchy in USA (government by large corporations) is another and deeply intertwined with the first. Fascism, the secrecy-state, the security-state, the anti-terrorist-state, and the imperialist-state (making wars which to others must seem the way terrorism seems to us) -- are all reasons to wish and act for change.
Drones like other military technology must be seen at least in part -- though I'd say primarily -- as a means for the manufacturer to induce the USA (or other warrior) to spend lots of money with that particular manufacturer.
Of course, guided missiles and aircraft are far more expensive and make for more money for their mfrs per item, but the USA buys fewer of them (I'd suppose).
NOTE: the mfr doesn't care if the use of the drones is legal or useful or even helps USA-imperialist aims, and the military folks who plump for using them have an eye on lucrative post-military employment.
News of global warming's PRESENT and OBSERVABLE effects (these are canaries in the global coal-mine):
http://summitcountyvoice.com/2012/04/22/global-warming-alpine-plants-swiftly-losing-ground
Researchers measure significant changes in plant communities across European mountain ranges
Global warming is diminishing species diversity across many mountain ranges in Europe at a dizzying pace. A continent-wide study showed measurable changes in plant communities just within a decade, according to a study led by the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the University of Vienna.
Juan, you are far too restrained, mild almost.
Apart from America's and much of the world's pay-to-play politics (I call it oligarchy) whereby BIG-OIL "owns" USA's energy policy -- there is also the problem of the short attention horizons of elected politicians. They see re-election in 2 or 4 or 6 years as a real issue, but do not see the problems of food/water/weather in 50/100 years as part of their proper concern. In that sense, the possibility of re-election produces a sort of institutional CORRUPTION in favor of big campaign contributors, of course, but also in favor of immediate (short time-line) issues.
"No Relection" was once, I believe, part of a Mexican political slogan. If it were a rule of law everywhere, elected politicians would be free to accept money and then double-cross the donors -- free of punishment in a subsequent round. But if the public doesn't demand government action on long-term problems, even single-term elected officials would not turn to the real business of humanity.
This is important for us all to consider: "“Nuclear energy is expected to become once again a primary source of energy, with the rising demand for oil and gas and the ensuing increase in the prices, which incidentally can sharply accelerate for any political provocation. We should add to this the concerns about the environment, and the world will have no alternative but to revert back to nuclear energy, at least for decades to come… ”
(Description of Source: Tehran IRNA (Internet Version-WWW) in English — official state-run news agency) … "
I had a friend who was/is a physicist who promoted nuclear power as against coal power because he saw the effluents of nukes as preferable to those of coal. This was before global warming was "announced". I'd go, instead, for wind and solar power (and a much reduced world population (over time) because of the dangers/difficulties of permanent/temporary storing wastes adn the dangers of accidents and deliberate disruption of nuclear power plants.
But Iran's statement bears wide repeating and discussion.
Brutality is grotesque (in the so-called Light to the Nations, or anywhere else) but since it is vastly present in Israeli-controlled-territories to the point that its purveyors cannot judge the difference between more-visible foreigners and less-visible Palestinians (sometimes called "Natives" !), it is good that it happened to a Dane.
Now to get the Danes and Germans to get a tiny bit of reality to balances their FP based on guilt and pity.
"As for taqiyya, or pious dissimulation, it is widely misrepresented by Muslim-haters and does not apply in Khamenei’s case."
HOWEVER THAT MAY BE, it appears that lying to the American public is a standard operating procedure of certain "neocons" who learned it as a preferred technique from Prof. Leo Strauss, who advocated use of the so-called Noble Lie in politics.
So, even if true, why pick SELECTIVELY on Iranians?
You write, "The MEK was then and is now on the US State Department’s terrorism watch list, so the Pentagon’s deployment of this group was quite illegal." Well, possibly not illegal if the government is doing it, who knows what the statute says and what the courts say?
More to the point, the government alone may prosecute the crimes of terrorism, and the government has definitively shown a practice of prosecuting -- to the hilt -- Muslims who aid Hamas-related hospitals but declining to prosecute American "notables" who aid the MEK.
Prosecutorial discretion is the key to the "rule of MEN" rather than the "rule of LAW".
Darkly comic? Charlie Chaplin would have loved it? The Little Torturer?
OTOH, maybe the Polish government will reveal the CIA figures involved (and their own!). That would place the USA in the position of being (along, of course, with, as I suppose, USSR, China, Israel, much of Middle East and Africa, etc., officially opposing torture whilst continuing to do it and continuing to protect those who do it and who did it -- all while the law forbids/forbade it.
On second thoughts, Chaplin might have made it funny.
Then, for an encore, he could have had us convulsing in the aisles over jokes about the USA, China, et al., nearly completely ignoring climate change -- see the head lines now -- "Bigger than the Holocaust!", "Bigger than Stalin's murder of 30 million Ukrainians!", "Coming soon to theaters near you, the now-inescapable effects of formerly preventable climate change!".
Why complain about a little measly torture? But why are they spinning their wheels on torture (or terrorism) when the world has REAL problems?
But we (or some of us) DO want out guns! And we (or some of us) want our bigotry! What else have we got?
Especially if we are poor and being trampled under the corporate foot and have no hope that our ideological political party (Republican -- because it respects "family values" such as gun-totin' and bigotry, unlike them Dems) will do anything for us (except, perhaps, "hear our anger") -- we jes' gotta keep our guns and our bigotry, or we'd really have nothing!
The sound of one hand nothing.
Lily of the valley, live in the moment. Breathe deeply, inhale the fragrance of today's flowers. A good day is hard to come by.
My take is that no-one requires a Sikh to take a hard-hat job. It's his choice. If he does take such a job, he should comply with the law and wear a hard-hat. (For all I know, it is not only a matter of his own safety, but perhaps also the safety of others.)
No-one requires [one or] several Catholics to establish a hospital or a university. It's their choice. If they do so, they must comply with the law. FURTHERMORE, such an institution is NOT a religious institution, even if staffed entirely with Catholics. Any more than a town would become a religious institution if all its citizens/residents were Catholics.
To be devoid of unbelief and of religion [belief].
The sound of one hand clapping. Doing by not doing. Many people seem to have grasped this, this bottle of wine.
So many years ago and already the 1% v 99% !! We have plenty of nothing, they have plenty of plenty. To say nothing of plenty of political power (which, today, is a commodity almost everywhere, price on a bar-code).
And so it goes.
Did the pollsters ask if the polees WANTED a war, or believed it justified, or only if the polees EXPECTED a war?
One Republican candidate may have a Mexican heritage, but they all are human beings (or at least have a human-being heritage), and the anti-people, anti-women, anti-poor, etc. attitudes -- proudly trumpeted -- seem to me as contrar7y to THAT heritage. But, then, I am an old guy who grew up when FDR was a fairly people-friendly Democrat 9even tho rich himself -- showing it could be done if the politician were humane).
I have read (and believe) that the disciples of many major religious teachers (Christ, Buddha come to mind, perhaps Moses) recognized that something major had happened but didn't really understand it. The disciples all felt the imperative to teach, to convert, to carry forward the mystery -- but because they didn't understand it, they corrupted the message and taught what they COULD understand.
Hence, I suppose, heaven and hell. And "holy" war. And anti-gay.
Joey: As I understand it, most/many Israeli Jews feel absolved of the need to be "moral" by fear (carefully kept "vibrant" by constant propaganda) of annihilation in "another Holocaust". By this argument, "morality" is something for comfortable people, but not something which Israelis (so vulnerably vulnerable!) can afford to be concerned with.
A lot of American Jews seem to feel the same way. Strangely, neither of these groups is even slightly comforted by the huge size and equipment of the Israeli military apparatus, often said to be the FOURTH LARGEST IN THE WORLD.
On the other hand, many USA Jews (I am one) believe in morality and also international law. We don't participate in the fear-induced-knee-jerk-warlike-ideations of those I described.
However, they (and not we) seem to occupy the "seats of power" in the USA's Jewish communities today.
Of course, Hezbollah's promise/thret is just a form of smoke, since Iran has already been attacked many, many times on the nuclear issue. Not with airplanes or guided missiles, I suppose, perhaps with drone-airplanes.
I suppose that "keep them guessing" is always a good practice in brinkmanship.
Why cannot the "greens" in this map get up on their hind legs and do something about ending the Israeli occupations of the Golan Heights and, oh yes, Gaza and the West Bank including (said for clarity) occupied East Jerusalem?
You know, just by speaking truth to power (USA, anglophone pro-settler-colonial commonwealth, and EU) about international law and human rights?
Would it help to say, "Hurry up, please, it's time!"?
Who pays the piper calls the tune. The elephant in the cartoon is whistling HaTikva.
AIPAC & Co. have captured the Republicans -- with much help from pro-Israel fundamentalist evangelicals who wish for a Middle-East war to cause, in approved Biblically predicted style, the end of the world of which it appears they are existentially tired -- and so, like most of the Democrats, the Republicans are now "representing" Israeli rather than American interests.
When they are not "representing" BANK and OIL interests rather than "American" interests.
Be fun if OBAMA would give a very public speech, lay out a realistic scenario (as Ron Paul sort of did) about CONSEQUENCES of war and a mumble-or-two about national-debt and war-costs, especially for wars-of-choice (aka illegal aggressive wars); but the Republicans in the audience are unlikely to agree: see The Republican Brain: Why Even Educated Conservatives Deny Science -- and Reality
Excellent. Total agreement. What big money (aggravated by Citizens United) has done to USA politics is to create a HEREDITARY ARISTOCRACY of the wealthy corporations and wealthy individuals (hate to say "persons" any more!). An aristocracy because they are overwhelmingly powerful. Hereditary because that wealth passes along, year after year, in the same corporations adn same families.
Shortening campaigns, though, steps on free press (if radio and TV are "press") and on "free speech". even if occicial FCC-type campiagns are one-month long, nothing would preclude KOCH- and ADELSON-types from buying high-priced "time" outside that period.
Need some constitutional twiddling here.
"US foreign aid is 1/4 of the federal budget,"
If the Iraq war was fought to protect and enrich multi-national corporations, not especially USA tax-payers, many not USA-corporations in any sense, all with non-USA shareholders, then, One Must Ask:
ONLY 1/4?
Hmm. (non-poetic form): Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen. (Ludwig Wittgenstein) (roughly: what cannot be spoken of must be the subject of silence).
MK: Some discussion has it that India and China are cutting back on Iran oil due to caution (not USA pressure); caution because the madness of USA-Israel might bring about a war or otherwise cut off, even briefly, the normal flow of Iranian oil.
Maybe that's what the "war talk" is for, anyhow, to scare buyers of Iranian oil. But, isn't cutting down on buyers for Iranian oil the equivalent of reducing world oil supply and driving prices up? (BIG-OIL might like that, of course, but who else?)
"Israel and its media agents in the United States have expended enormous resources in attempting to convince the US public that the Iranian leadership is made up of mad mullahs obsessed with the end of the world who would gleefully light the nuclear match that brought about an apocalypse."
What have these Israeli save-the-world-from-apocalypse fellas got to say about the USA's end-times evangelicals who support Israel IN ORDER to bring on the end of the world?
Hmmm?
The pressure of the world is pressing in on everyone -- economic, political, environmental, populational. People who suffer are turning to fundamentalism as if it really offered help. Islamic fundamentalism we decry, Christian fundamentalism we (some of us) praise, and Jewish fundamentalism we cannot find words to pronounce -- as it takes us to war after war.
As to FDR: "During the campaign Roosevelt often flayed the capitalists, whose power had "become so disproportionate as to dry up purchasing power within any other group. . . . It is a proper concern of the Government to use wise measures of regulation which will bring this purchasing power back to normal."3 In another speech, he said that "if the process of concentration goes on at the same rate, at the end of another century we shall have all American industry controlled by a dozen corporations, and run by perhaps a hundred men. Put plainly, we are steering a steady course toward economic oligarchy, if we are not there already. (http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/franklin-roosevelt-and-the-greatest-economic-myth-of-the-twentieth-century/)
"Saudi’s reserves are declining by 3% a year."
Is this the long-awaited prediction of the end of easy oil (30 years out at VERY MOST) or is this just another in the long, long, long chain of predictions of the end of easy oil. (I am not a fan of oil, having become a Global warming cultist.) Tar sands, here we come! Ugleeeee.
Agreed. You should have refrained from printing the sensible speech (as also the nonsensical Santorum). REFRAIN, OH! REFRAIN! Americans might (by accident) read your blog and we have been trained not to appreciate long sense, but oly short and emotional nonsense.
I prefer Juan's "take" to most that I've read on "who dun it." The world has long known anonymous assassination. And has long known back-flag operations (and even an anonymous "op" can be "black-flag" if the actor publicly blames someone else). Oh, for the comforting old days when those who sent in the bombers proudly announced their claim for responsibility.
Today, Israel and the USA have upped the ante, so to speak, in the anonymous sweepstakes, with DRONES which are (at least potentially) capable of anonymous destructive action.
The fog-of-war is getting ever foggier. Perhaps that's what we can learn from recent events.
Is this a pre-global-warming lament? It seems to speak of doing the usual things that people do -- without responsibility or higher purpose.
Lobsters and snakes can live for a while without their skins/shells and regularly shed them. It is a bit odd for (much of) mankind to be shedding its skin/shell, where we have no experience getting a new one.
Juan, I like the idea of civil-BDS warming up in Europe to the point that the governments feel obliged to overcome whatever (very strong and corrupt) pro-Israel feelings have prevented them (in 44 years) from taking action w.r.t. the evils of the CONDUCT adn (after 44 years also the EXISTENCE) of the occupation.
But why do we have to wait for a military trigger? What exactly is it that disempowers Europe to adopt strong state-BDS right now, today, as a pre-emptive strike against Israel's widely-trumpeted anti-Iran planning, especially as the "excuse" or "provocation" of the occupation has been with us for 44 years and is getting worse day by day?
What is happening in Syria is a horrible tragedy; I hope that this death-producing revolution is not primarily a USA-CIA project.
As to BRIC, one wonders why BRIC do not put forward a regime-change (or at least an anti-occupation) resolution on Israel w.r.t. its occupation of Palestine so that the world can compare the USA's support for often-deadly illegalities with Russia's and China's support for Syria's deadly counter-revolution. Could even the NYT refuse to publish them side-by-side?
I hadn't heard about Portugal. I had heard that Spain was pretty far along toward using renewables. (USA in rear-guard, refusing to modernize anything except weapons-systems).
These numbers seem to be about electricity. Does that include building-heating (if needed in those countries), building-cooling? It surely does not (yet) cover road-traffic, air-traffic, water-traffic, though it migh cover train-traffic.
Is there a web-site showing all this stuff, and showing annual changes (aka progress, regress)?