My friend Kelso understands most of the details surrounding S American politics and the fact that the USA has had a bloody hand in their dealings down there for quite some time. You can read his input here.

In coordination with his writings, I saw this article at A Tiny Revolution that describes the situation as nicely as anyone has done. I have to ask: what happened to our “influence” in South America? Do you think that our murderous activities and Fascist backing of the the last remaining, corrupt governments down there have finally taken its full toll on the people?

Is it possible that these little brown people in the Amazon have fall BIGGER Balls than any US citizen alive?

Latin America, World’s Moral Political Leader

Some Things Never Change

h/t A Tiny Revolution

Art by Leon Kuhn

A Tiny Revolution is a blog that addresses many issues surrounding the US Empire and other prescient and newsworthy articles, hinted with a bit of humor. In this case, there is little funny, but it is quite important to know:

From the Oubliettes of History: the Negligibles

By: Bernard Chazelle

In the early seventies, the US decided to take control of Diego Garcia from the Brits, who naturally said, How high? (By protocol, a US request to the British government is always formulated as “Jump!”)

One ever-so-minor detail was that on that beautiful island lived what’s commonly referred to as “people.” Well, not by everyone. As Jonathan Freedland puts it:

Best of all, the population was such that it could be written off, in CIA-speak, as NEGL: “negligible.”

Once the Negligibles were negliged away, the island became a crucial military outpost for the empire,

both the launch pad for the B-1s, B-2 “stealth” bombers, and B-52s that pounded Afghanistan and Iraq and a crucial node in the CIA’s rendition system, a “black site” through which at least two high-value suspected terrorists were spirited, far from the prying eyes of international law.

Meanwhile, the Negligibles

were forced to board crammed cargo ships for a nightmarish crossing—sleeping on decks slick with urine and vomit— to Mauritius or the Seychelles where they were dumped, with no homes to go to and no compensation to make up for the possessions and livelihoods they had been forced to leave behind. From then until now, they have lived among the corrugated tin shacks of the slums of Port Louis in Mauritius, their lives scarred by extreme poverty, unemployment, drug and alcohol abuse, and diseases unknown in their previous island home.

The US military was at the time busy committing worse atrocities in another part of Asia. But it’s worth pausing over this episode of ethnic cleansing in the proud tradition of the trail of tears (if not the middle passage). With always the same motivation: to steal someone else’s land.

And now a nice touch that will endear our glorious military heroes to all the children gathered around the campfire:

[T]he commissioner of the British Indian Ocean Territory, as it was now renamed, gave the order for the islanders’ pet dogs to be killed; after US soldiers armed with M16 rifles failed to shoot them all, the animals were gassed as their owners looked on.

The gas-vs-bullets thing, that’s one neat trick we got from the Germans in the forties.

Winslow Wheeler, Counterpunch – For decades, the media have taken their descriptions of the size of the defense budget straight from the Pentagon’s annual press release – without even rudimentary double-checking. This year, they will cite the top-line dollar amount at $534 billion . . .

That number ignores an additional $6 billion the Pentagon will get in “mandatory” appropriations, mostly for personnel-related expenses. The data are available from the Office of Management and Budget, but its press releases are more complicated.

Some, but not all, of the news articles will also ignore the additional $130 billion sought to finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Barring last-minute changes to the numbers by Gates and OMB, the correct amount for the president’s request for the Pentagon in 2010 will be $670 billion.

The articles will also leave out the money being sought by the Department of Energy for nuclear weapons and other appropriations, such as for the Selective Service and the National Defense Stockpile. Again, not in the DOD press release. Add another $22 billion.

Consider the human costs of current and previous wars in the Department of Veterans Affairs – surely, a legitimate defense cost. Add $106 billion.

Also consider the Department of Homeland Security: Add $43 billion.

What about the military and economic aid to Iraq and Afghanistan, gifts and loans to Israel and others, U.N. peacekeeping costs, and all the rest from the State Department? Add $49 billion.

Also, there is an account buried in the Department of the Treasury to help pay for military retirement. Add about $28 billion.

Each year, we pay interest on the national debt. People disagree, sometimes strenuously, on how much is DOD’s share. About 20 percent of federal spending goes to the Pentagon: That’s another $57 billion.

Add it all together, and you get $974 billion – almost $1 trillion.

If you want to know how much we spend for defense in a generic sense, you can about double the $534 billion many articles will report.

h/t Chycho

But it is the fact that an Empire must keep its citizenry under control and if they barrage them enough with these types of intrusions, it can become “acceptable” that we simply allow such searches to go on. Its just the way it is now a days and the government knows what they are doing to protect us, right?

An Empire will control its citizens with an iron fist and one would have to be totally blind to not have seen the long, painful ride towards this ever reaching control. Phone tappings, tasing indiscriminately, an overzealous and vengeful police force militarized with machine guns and even tanks. The Empire will use vast resources to fight and quell a citizen uprising or demonstration… mega dollars to fight the lawsuits of those who have been infringed upon (usually losing the case, but with ever deepening pockets, normally poor citizens cannot afford the fight).

When Jonathon penned these words, he nails the issue precisely:

We need to think seriously about the type of citizens being shaped in these authoritarian environments. These kids are learning that they must accept arbitrary and often illogical actions by public figures. This month in Virginia, an honors high school student was suspended and faces expulsion for taking her prescribed birth control pill in school. With such cases, the government appears to be training a generation of passive citizens ideal for subjugation and control.

Please read his entire article here.

The fact is that we have become a complacent/passive public who seem to desire subjugation and control, as if we could not function without it. We now have those fake conservatives who would prefer this police state than freedom, even though they, almost in the same breath, say they defend the constitution. At the link above (I don’t link to this guy for your enjoyment, but so you can get a taste of the idiotic apologies and defense of George W Bush Administration War Crimes) you will find the way the brainwashed “right wing” thinks. When it comes to personal liberties and freedoms, this is their response:

Extraordinary rendition – I see nothing that shows Bush approved of this. All those kidnappings are related to the CIA. Right now, I have to assume the CIA and only the CIA authorized those missions. Bush established torture? Endorsing yes, establishing, no. Illegal wiretapping?

Here is my take on it. If you aren’t doing anything illegal, then you have nothing to worry about. I don’t care if people listen in on my calls or read my e-mails. Invasion of privacy? Okay, but they keep their findings private unless it is deemed dangerous to the country and its citizens. I never saw anything get publically released.

You see, in America, where the constitution rules with these “conservatives” giving up your rights is fine, as long as you aren’t doing anything “wrong”. Yes, he wrote that without batting an eye. Truly believes it. And hence my point. These people are brainwashed, too far gone to be of any real assistance to this great country. On the contrary, these people are a detriment to our country and liberties. I made it half way thru and when, in addressing John Yoo, he wrote “We can never take that guy seriously.” How incredibly stupid can a person be? The fact is that Bush and the torture policy gurus took him deadly seriously. And now the right wing “leaders” are defending the policy that was long ago established as immoral, illegal and war crimes. To wipe it away is idiotic (or complicit).

In real life, the issue would be that these fake conservatives would be the loudest screamers of rights infringement, IF they saw some sort of partisan wedge it could bring. OR maybe if someone was actually watching and listening to his personal calls and he found out, OR maybe as he peruses his porn…

What’s next, is it ok for the police to use technology to bug your home and car? Work? How about lining every street in America with cameras? Would that be enough Big Brother for you to “do nothing wrong”? And who is it that says what is “wrong” to begin with? Would that be the constitution and our laws? Or would that be the whim of an over-zealous right wing thug teacher at a middle school?

This is why I told him down in comments that I couldn’t carry on a conversation with a brainwashed idiot. I don’t have the time and the country doesn’t have the time to straighten these idiots out. They will just have to be left behind, begging their neocon leadership to protect them from bogey men, when it is their very leadership they need to fear.

But it isn’t just the right-wing that is brainwashed. It is the left, as well. Look how many people still defend Barack Obama after his many lies and flip-flops. But they don’t care. As long as Obama won they have their emotional victory. It doesn’t matter that there isn’t one iota of difference between what has happened over the past 8 years and what is happening now in this Empire, with very few exceptions (and those exceptions do not add up to a hill of beans). Now, you have those lefties blasting anyone who merely says that Barack lied (when it is painfully obvious in videos).

Two parties, two groups of sycophantic water carriers, intent on continuing the idiotic paradigm that keeps them blind as bats and us crushed as a nation.

“State controlled Capitalism is called Fascism. And Fascism has come to America in broad daylight.”

“If you want to look at a mafia, look at the Democratic and Republican parties.”

“Forget about calling this government, Wall Street has hijacked Washington.”

h/t Dandelion Salad

by Howard Zinn

“Empire or Humanity? What the Classroom Didn’t Teach Me about the American Empire by Howard Zinn, Narrated by Viggo Mortensen, Art by Mike Konopacki, Video editing by Eric Wold.”

Alan Bock seems to think so:

Empire Nearing Its End?

Anyone who thought that as president Barack Obama would begin to roll back the breathtaking expansion of power arrogated to the executive branch under the Bush-Cheney administration should have been disabused of the notion by now. And despite the new president’s expansive view of what the central government should be doing domestically – running the auto industry and banking, seizing more control of the rest of the financial sector, bailing out auto parts suppliers, changing our energy mix dramatically, expanding government responsibility for health care to unsustainable levels, and quite a bit more – he is finding, as most recent presidents have, that foreign affairs offers more opportunities to expand and exercise unaccountable power.

It wouldn’t be surprising, however, perhaps because of the magnitude of the ambitions on display and because the foreign and domestic forces capable of pushing back are already in place, if it is in foreign affairs that the American empire most dramatically runs headlong into reality, is forced to acknowledge the limits of military power (perhaps not as dramatically as in the instance of the Somali pirates, however that turns out), and crashes on the rocks. Foreign and domestic issues are related, of course, but so far it is in foreign policy that President Obama has most notably embraced the Bush precedents and even sought to expand them. And it is there that disappointment and disillusionment are most likely to hit – not immediately, perhaps, but soon enough.

To be sure, Obama has announced that he plans to close the Guantanamo prison camp, a perhaps overemphasized but nonetheless important symbol of the tendency of decisions taken without much thought beforehand to lead to obvious and embarrassing abuses. But closing the camp in a satisfactory manner will not be easy. And Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have said they are renouncing torture, although it seems to be the case that they have not renounced extraordinary rendition or the thoroughly un-American (or at least illiberal) power to detain certain people indefinitely without charges, albeit with a label other than the Bush administration’s sloppy “enemy combatant.”

It is not possible for an outside observer to be sure whether or not the Obamaites had planned to finesse some Guantanamo closing complications simply by moving prisoners to the vast and probably more abusive prison camp at Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, although that certainly appears to be the case. The administration in February did argue that it agreed with the Bushies’ contention that U.S. courts had no jurisdiction there. It is encouraging, however, that they are getting some pushback from the judicial branch, in the form of a ruling from District Judge John D. Bates that at least some prisoners at Bagram have ancient right of habeas corpus to challenge their imprisonment.

It is on matters that most bother those who still think civil liberties should be accorded some measure of respect, however, that the Obama administration has been most disappointing – or predictable, depending on your view of the proclivity of politicians of any stripe to expand their power wherever and whenever they see an opportunity. It is also n these areas that other branches of government – mainly the judicial branch – are inclined to push back, having already begun to do so in a modest way and on some of the very same issues as during the Bush-Cheney era.

It is also likely to take a while to determine the outcome of Obama’s domestic initiatives, especially since economic issues in an economy this size are complicated enough that it is difficult to trace cause-and-effect lines in unambiguous ways that are likely to evoke agreement from scholars and policy analysts of various ideological predilections. If, as some forecasters predicted as much as a year ago, the current recession bottoms out around the end of this year regardless of what the government does, but leads to an anemic rather than a robust recovery, what effect would that have on Obama’s political fortunes and the willingness of people to let him keep accumulating power? The only prediction I’m willing to make is that partisan analysts will be clashing daily on cable news to sell their interpretations. But which will win, I don’t pretend to know.

We already know, however, that the U.S. military, with an $800 million destroyer and no plan until it resorted to old-school methods, looked like a pitiful giant against four ostensible pirates in a lifeboat as long as said pirates held a U.S. captain hostage. In some ways it is becoming clearer, even before the “surge” in Afghanistan has been fully implemented, that it is likely to fail, given the fact that the Taliban are an indigenous force and the United States and NATO are not. And even if Iraq is wound down successfully, enough people understand that the U.S. surge in troops was only a minor factor in the reduction of violence over the last year or so – a reduction that could prove troublingly fragile – that most Americans still believe the war was an unwise venture that should not be repeated. The tolerance for an Afghan war is likely to be shorter than it was for Iraq, especially among people who have been Obama supporters and thus willing to suspend criticism for at least a time.

In the area of civil liberties, especially due process cases, the Obama administration is stuck defending Bush-era precedents. That it has chosen to do so has disappointed a few of its erstwhile supporters, though fewer than one might have wished. But the judicial branch has already become accustomed to pushing back against the Bush administration and seems prepared to do so with Obama as well.

Thus in the case of Fadi al-Maqaleh, the Obama people essentially wanted to proceed as if those imprisoned at Bagram – under an especially broad definition of “enemy combatant” that might well include selling food to actual combatants – had no shred of habeas corpus rights. But Judge Bates quoted Alexander Hamilton (himself arguably the most authoritarian of the founders) in Federalist 84, to wit: “Confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less striking, less public, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government.” And he gave at least those captured outside Afghanistan whom the U.S. government had wanted to “disappear” into Bagram the right to challenge the constitutionality of their imprisonment.

The Obama administration has likewise echoed the Bush line in the case of Mohammed v. Jeppesen Dataplan, now before the 9th Circuit federal appellate court. The plaintiffs allege that they were seized by American personnel and stripped, blindfolded, and shackled to the floor of an airplane as they were taken to other countries to be tortured. The Bushies argue that the whole complaint should be dismissed because litigating it would expose state secrets and clue in al-Qaeda members to the kind of treatment they should prepare themselves for if captured. The Obamaites have used precisely the same argument.

The Obamaites have similarly used [.pdf] the state-secrets argument in challenges to the so-called Terrorist Surveillance Program, the National Security Agency program of unwarranted wiretapping of U.S. residents and citizens on U.S. soil. This defense is likely to fail, but it is at least chilling that the Obama administration, after campaigning that it would busy itself correcting Bush-era excesses in the violation of civil liberties, is instead continuing and perhaps compounding these violations.

The courts are already accustomed to pushing back against outlandish claims of unaccountable executive power in the national security arena, and they might well become even bolder, especially in denying mostly bogus claims regarding state secrets. And as the Obama administration seeks yet another $83.4 billion supplemental appropriation –the latest of 17 – to conduct the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and as Defense Secretary Gates finds that even modest reforms to the process of acquiring unnecessary and overpriced weapons systems in a defense budget that has increased 43 percent since 1998 is made almost impossible by institutional lethargy and various Iron Triangles, disillusionment with defense spending and empire is likely to settle in.

It may be that disillusionment with the absurd war on drugs will become politically significant before most of the American public tires of the war on anyone who bothers us or poses a real or imagined threat to politically connected big businesses. But we are approaching the limits of power, and that day is coming.

In response to that post, my friend kelso’s nuts posted a response worthy of its own independent post, for it gets to the crux of what is going on. It poignantly explains how and why the “Progressive Blogs” have really become nothing more than water carriers for Obama and his administration, no matter what new lie is discovered or new negation of a promise made. The C&L’s, Daily Kos and ThinkProgress seems to be much more interested in playing to the MSM (you are seeing the “left” take over the airwaves slowly but surely.

The sad part is that it is so damned obvious that many of these are simply enamored by the attention they get, the power of the TV appearance, the search for more hits on their website, drawing in more money that they would back Barack Obama’s policies and lies, no matter how atrocious. It is virtually no difference between their ilk and the ones who defend Bush. The modus operandi is the same. Protect the party, and to hell with those that disagree.

Just yesterday, C&L’s David Neiwert (a favorite of my fake progressive attack dog Gene’O) posted a congratulatory and agreeable post to Glenn Beck. Honoring him for “debunking” the FEMA camps set up. David and the Democrats at C&L posted a similar piece a few days before and now, all the sudden, these water-carriers are best buddies with Beck because he did the same piss-poor investigation into this issue that The Elite’s mouthpiece spouted.

Damn, David (and John Amato), you must be very proud that you are on the same erroneous page that Glenn beck is on. Nice work, geniuses.

Did it ever occur to you that a real investigation would actually investigate the paper trail of the government’s outline of the programs or the fact that Halliburton was give the contracts to build these FEMA camps? Why, of course not. Methinks that these “crack investigators” learn how to use that sleuthing tool called a Google Search, perhaps. Maybe even just for jollies. Google “PDD51″ to see that we could be arguably under a form of Martial Law right now. Google Executive Order 11,000 or go here to see that they have implemented a contingency plan for mobilizing a civilian work force, can take over the electrical grid and every other utility in the nation, or any other myriad of actions that take over the country and put people in to a controlled situation. Or try “H.R. 645″ to see the outline for such “Emergency Centers” and their implementation. Maybe this paper, “Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support” may give you something to “investigate”.

In other words, these crack “investigators at C&L, the ones who give Popular Mechanics all sorts of back pats and suggestions that they are some sort of viable debunking source (why on earth this is assumed is beyond me, especially after their “debunking” of the 9/11 conspiracy… another area David and the Demorats from C&L will likely agree.

And, you know what else they missed and have applauded because their new controllers must have told them to, the fact that Robert Gates, a war criminal, in many minds (not from his latest foray, but the Iran Contra deal he was all over) is a neocon who has been embraced by the likes of the “Progressive Bloggers”, yet they have done no investigation into his policies and actions. They just jump right on board, like good little jackboots. Kelso explains:

What you have painstakingly set forth here about Gates is exactly why I get so infuriated at the responses I get when I leave a criticism about the current administration on a blog which is not quite so focused on peace, freedom, social justice, responsibility, anti-imperialism, proportionality in criminal sanction, and steady economic growth as yours, ours, Torrance’s, etc.

The standard response is “give him a chance.” “A chance” to do what, exactly? Blow the world in two? Completely beggar the dollar? I don’t know exactly how much time these people think is available to the USA and its president to take proper decisive action and reverse the course he’s on, but it’s measured in months if not weeks. I’ll come back to that, though, and focus for a moment on the meaning of Robert Gates being held over from Bush’s Administration to Obama’s.

Does everyone remember the circumstances surrounding the firing of Donald Rumsfeld and the hiring of Robert Gates as Secretary Of War in the middle of the 2nd GWB term? The polls were indicating a landslide Democratic win in the midterms. They were also indicating for the first time since 9/11/01,a drop in public support for US Imperialist War below 45%. [NB: While Bush himself finished with very low approval ratings, the approval ratings for his wars once at 90% found a floor at around 48% and were usually around 50% for most of the 2nd term, except for early October of 2006].

Two significant events followed in quick succession that October. A group convened by James Baker III which included Brent Scowcroft, George Shultz, Secretary Lehman, a number of the more moderate Reagan/Bush41 hands, and perhaps Robert Gates himself, presented President George W. Bush with a plan for immediate withdrawal from Iraq and South Asia, to be completed over a period of three or four months. The purpose of this was twofold: (1) to help the Republican Party stave off a massacre in the midterm elections (2) to get out of two disastrous wars and salvage something of a legacy for Bush43.

The press portrayed the Baker Plan as “Daddy coming to Junior’s rescue–AGAIN,” thus forstalling any possibility that Bush the Lesser might actually use the Baker Plan if only in service of his own reputation. He was damned if he did, damned if he didn’t.

Enter McCain with a diametrically opposite Iraq (and South Asia) plan: “The Surge.” Bush The Lesser had a reason to tell Baker to go to hell, with the press’s favorite politician offering an escalation plan instead of a withdrawal plan. Enter now a surprising voice of reason in the whole matter: Secretary Of War, Donald Rumsfeld. He presented Bush The Lesser with a plan splitting the difference between Baker’s immediate withdrawal and McCain’s “Surge.” The Rumsfeld plan of October 2006 would have a smaller “Surge” of shorter duration with a fixed date of Christmas 2008 to have EVERY active duty serviceperson and all contractors out of both Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush did not comment on Rumsfeld’s compromise and it got very little attention in the press.

The Midterm Elections of 2006 were as bad for the Republicans as predicted and Rove chose the perfect scapegoat. Give that man a cigar, Donald Rumsfeld, who was sacrificed to make way for a “moderate,” Robert Gates. This seemed to make the press overjoyed and mollified a Democratic Party to the point of complete inaction in the 110th Congress, despite having been given Congress to address this very problem. There was a strange couple of days following the firing of Rumsfeld and hiring of Gates in which there was open hostility between Rumsfeld and the Bush/Cheney/Rove troika, with Rumsfeld making veiled threats to “tell everything.”

Instead, the world was treated to the same sort of weasel words from Gates that you cite in your piece, Buelahman. Gates made it seem as if he were on the verge of ending the wars immediately, but somehow in a more “responsible” and “mature” way than the Baker Plan or Rumsfeld Plan had set forth. Rumsfeld “settled” for being allowed to apologize to the American people for his own poor judgement from the start and off he crept from the main stage. Even and espcially still today, Donald Rumsfeld is considered an insane man of violence and Robert Gates the opposite–an experience, peaceable warrior whose goals are the ever elusive PEACE WITH HONOR in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite his immediate swith to support for McCain’s “surge” and his own robbing Peter to pay Paul in service of the “bellicose” Bush and subsequently the “pacifist” Obama.

In a bit of tragic irony, the world would have been far better off had Obama chosen Donald Rumsfeld as his Secretary Of War instead of keeping Gates!

But Bill Clinton had Obama nailed dead to rights in February of 2008 when Clinton famously said that Obama’s “pacifism” was a “fairy tale.” In hindsight, and with the knowledge of her relatively peaceable style as Secretary of State, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s treatment at the hands of Obama in the primary season showed exactly how devoid of principles Barack Obama is. Why he was framing the race for the Democratic nominee as between himself as Gandhi versus Clinton as Erwin Rommel!

Had Barack Obama truly been an agent of change and not another right-wing American imperialist he would have bounced Gates in favor of an Iraq War and South Asia War opponent such as Richard Clarke, Admiral William J Fallon, or Valerie Plame. Obama’s choice to keep Gates ought to have told everyone exactly where the world stood with Obama. I believe it’s always better to know where you stand than to maintain fantasies, but it seems that you, Buelahman, are among the very few connecting the public dots on Gates. And on what Gates means going forward.

Robert Gates and Barack Obama’s fiscal military profligacy are promoting of two potential disasters the likes of which America has not seen in a long time and could well mean America’s self-destruction.

DISASTER 1, of course, is the second commodity shock and dollar crash Dr Ron Paul has been so eloquently warning of for years now. Combine steeply contangoed energy and metals curves with an inflationary fiscal policy elsewhere with the destabilizing effect that more war will definitely have, and the USA will have an economic condition EXACTLY like that of Weimar Germany between the wars and like Russia and the FSU immediately following the end of communism: RECESS-FLATION. This means a $10 box of Kellogg’s Cornflakes and food and water riots in every city in America.

DISASTER 2 is what could happen if the Obama/Gates plan to escalate indefinitely in South Asia to the point that Gates has no choice but to quarter 20,000 or more US servicepeople in the disputed territory of Pakistani Kashmir. There is already a shooting war going on there between India and Pakistan costing 25 lives a day. When 20,000 or more US troops are in the region with no clear assignment of any kind, let alone setting the table for India/Pakistan Peace Talks, a nuclear war between India and Pakistan becomes a legitimate possibility.

You see with Bangladesh and Sri Lanka just how fast problems in Afhanistan and Pakistan spill over into other troubled areas not even party to anything to do with al-Qaida or Islam of any sort!

GIVE HIM A CHANCE? Why do these idiotic bloggers insult my intelligence? They act as if Obama has eight years to make this right. He’s lucky if he has eight months and he doesn’t have as long as eight months if his key advisor is Robert Gates.