Stephen Lendman

[Part II]

"Bottom line: the worst of bad practices will continue, besides teams of lawyers devising ways around whatever regulations emerge. The public again [will be] scammed."

Last December, a two-part article discussed Obama's year one betrayal and failure, accessed through the following links here and here.

In year two, the pattern continued, revealing domestic and foreign policies that:

● outdid George Bush by exceeding his harshness, lawlessness, belligerency, and public trust betrayal;
● maintained a 30 year agenda of shifting public wealth to the rich, as well as supporting capital, not public welfare, including targeting middle class households for destruction;
● looted the nation's wealth, wrecked the economy, and consigned growing millions to impoverishment without jobs, homes, savings, social services, or futures;
● let hunger, homelessness, poverty, and those uninsured grow to unacceptable levels;
● backed Wall Street's financial coup d'etat by greater Fed empowerment, as well as institutionalizing speculation, "too-big-to fail," super-wealth, and big money power;
● plans new global monetary measures to control the world's money;
● continued America's permanent war agenda by expanding imperial adventurism, increasing covert and overt aggression on new fronts with out-of-control military spending, exceeding the rest of the world combined at a time America has no enemies;

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Lawrence Davidson
Redress

Benjamin Disraeli once labelled Britain’s government "an organized hypocrisy". That was in circa 1845. Things have not changed much and by now hypocrisy might well be seen as a common sin of democratic government. This is because in democracies straightforward honesty about behaviour that runs counter to the idealized national image is usually bad politics.

Among today’s democracies none proves this point more than the United States. The United States, like Great Britain in the 19th century, simultaneously acts like an imperial power and cultivates a national image as the world’s prime purveyor of good government, stability and progress. However, history has taught us that a nation cannot be both of these things at once. So the folks in Washington have created for themselves an environment wherein principle and consistency are impossible. Take, for instance, the following:

1. A stolen election in the Ivory Coast has resulted in active disapproval on the part of the US government. After all, this is not good government. President Obama slapped sanctions on the fellows who stole the vote and urged the United Nations to send more troops (some 9,000 are already in the country) to set things right. On the other hand, the November parliamentary elections in Egypt (presently a US ally) were an outright farce. The opposition was banned, jailed and otherwise intimidated. Not at all good government. And Washington’s response? Nothing. If you claim to be the prime purveyor of democracy in the world, are you not supposed to be consistent?

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Ghali Hassan
Axis of Logic

Mention fascism and most peoples’ minds turn to Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Japanese Fascism, Papadopoulos’ Greece and South Africa’s Apartheid regime. However, most people are blissfully unaware of a rising form of fascism, more virulent than all past fascist regimes combined. Its aim is to subjugate the entire planet and its resources to U.S. corporate interests.

It is true that German Fascism was evil; but it is also true that its evilness has been exploited, even exaggerated, by one powerful Zionist entity and its supporters to justify the persecution and dispossession of the Palestinian people. German Fascism has diversified and mutated into super fascism supported by regimes claiming to be “liberal democracies”.

The word Fascism originated from the Latin ‘Fasces’, means a bundle of sticks tied together to represent the ruling élite. At the heart of fascist ideology are corporatism, militarism, nationalism, racism and total control of citizens. Fascism is “a political system or regime with a tendency toward or actual exercise of Fascism” [Webster’s Dictionary]. Unfortunately, many opportunists and apologists for Israel-U.S. crimes use the word fascism as a name-calling, carelessly throwing it around to demonise others in order to mislead the public.

In his 2003 essay Fascism Anyone?, the British writer Laurence W. Britt identifies fourteen characteristics of fascism common to past fascist regimes. Are they common and shared by regimes today? The purpose of this essay is to seriously inform people of the growing danger of fascism today, using the fourteen characteristics as a matchup.

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Kurdistan Commentary

Jalal Barzanji, Kurdish poet and journalist, will soon release The Man in the Blue Pyjamas: Prison Memoir in the Form of a Novel, his memoirs about the time he spent imprisoned under Saddam Hussein’s regime.

The first draft of the book, completed in 2007, was written in Kurdish. After many rounds of revisions and translations, the novel will be available in April 2011 from University of Alberta Press.

‘It is a narrative about a part of my life which I (held) for years in my heart and memory,’ says the author.

The part of his life Barzanji speaks of is from 1986-1989, during which time he endured imprisonment and torture under Saddam Hussein’s regime because of his literary and journalistic achievements—writing that openly explores themes of peace, democracy, and freedom. For those three years, Barzanji wrote only on scrap paper, smuggled in to his cell in Iraq.

As an outspoken critic of the censorship under former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, Barzanji had been fully expecting to be either imprisoned or executed. ‘The regime was against freedom, and I was asking for freedom. I wasn’t a follower of the ideology and mentality of the regime. My pain was double – I was a modern writer and I was Kurdish…I was living in fear because I knew I was doing something dangerous, talking about peace, democracy, freedom,’ he said.

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Stephen Lendman

Since taking office, Obama achieved the impossible - compiling a worse record than his fiercest critics feared, worse than George Bush across the board on domestic and foreign policies. He:

● looted the nation's wealth for Wall Street;
● wrecked the economy;
● consigned millions to poverty, unemployment, and bleak futures;
● expanded unbridled militarism and imperial wars;
● spied more aggressively than ever on Americans;
● destroyed decades of hard won labor rights;
● targeted Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for erosion and elimination;
● further institutionalized public wealth transfers to super-rich elites who already have too much;
● commodified public education;
● subverted Net Neutrality;
● targeted whistleblowers, dissenters, Muslims, and environmental and animal rights activists as terrorists;
● militarized Haiti, engineered fraudulent elections, and provided no desperately needed aid;
● gave drug, insurance and hospital chain giants greater control over healthcare, rationing it and making a dysfunctional system worse;
● made America more than ever a police state, including by targeting immigrants, holding thousands in hundreds of unlisted, unmarked detention facilities in nearly every state before secret courts deport them, at times stranding them far from home countries.

On October 6, the Los Angeles Times headlined, "US deported record number of illegal immigrants," saying:

"For the second year in a row, the government deported more illegal immigrants during the last fiscal year than ever before, according to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) figures."

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Angola 3 News interviews Dahr Jamail

Bradley Manning, suspected source of Wikileaks

Independent journalist Dahr Jamail spent nine months reporting directly from Iraq, following the US invasion in 2003. His stories have been published by Antiwar.com, Inter Press Service, Truthout, Al-Jazeera, The Nation, The Sunday Herald in Scotland, the Guardian, Foreign Policy in Focus, Le Monde Diplomatique, the Independent, and many others. On radio as well as television, Dahr reports for Democracy Now!, has appeared on Al-Jazeera, the BBC and NPR, and numerous other stations around the globe.

Jamail is the author of two recent books: Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches From An Unembedded Journalist (2008) and The Will To Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse To Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan (2009). He also contributed Chapter 6, "Killing the Intellectual Class," for the book Cultural Cleansing in Iraq: Why Museums Were Looted, Libraries Burned and Academics Murdered (2010). Learn more at dahrjamailiraq.com

Angola 3 News: On April 4, 2010, WikiLeaks.org released a classified 2007 video of a US Apache helicopter in Iraq, firing on civilians and killing 11, including Reuters’ photojournalist Namir Noor-Eldeen and his driver, 40 year old Saeed Chmagh. No charges have been filed against the US soldiers involved.

In sharp contrast, a 22-year-old US Army intelligence analyst named Bradley Manning has been accused of leaking the classified video. Arrested in May and facing up to 52 years in prison for a range of charges, Manning is now being held under what lawyer/journalist Glenn Greenwald has termed "inhumane conditions."

Manning’s support website declares that "exposing war crimes is not a crime." Indeed, the Nuremberg Laws, established after the horrors of WWII, declare that soldiers have a legal obligation to resist criminal wars. Let’s please take a closer look at this issue of US war crimes. What do you think are the strongest arguments that have been made for why US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are criminal?

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Stephen Lendman

The Working Poor Families Project (WPFP) "is a national initiative focused on state workforce development policies involving: (1) education and skills training for adults; (2) economic development; and (3) income and work supports."

Its newest publication is titled, "Great Recession Hit Hard at America's Working Poor: Nearly 1 in 3 Working Families in United States are Low-Income." It explains distressing data on the state of America's poor and low income families, their condition getting worse, not better.

Citing new US Census data, it said nearly one-third of US families struggle to meet basic needs. Between 2007 and 2009, the percent of low-income families (earning less than 200% of the official threshold) rose from 28 - 30%. Their plight "challenges a fundamental assumption that in America, work pays." Clearly, not enough.

Though mostly invisible to policymakers, they comprise the economy's backbone working cash registers, cleaning homes and businesses, preparing restaurant and hotel food, caring for children and the elderly, as well as numerous other low-paid, poor benefits service jobs, increasingly temporary or part-time.

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Reham Alhelsi
My Palestine

My Palestinian sister, my Palestinian brother;
I write this letter today and I see your face in front of me, the face of Palestine. I see your smile; that of a poppy being kissed by the sun. I hear your whisper; that of an olive trees being hugged by the wind. I address this letter to you, for I know your name and you know mine: Palestinian.

2010 was declared the year of the Palestinian prisoners/detainees. Throughout the year, some local newspapers here in occupied Palestine published daily reports about you, your detention, your heroism, published interviews with your families, your loved ones telling of your detention, of the painful visits, of the Israeli oppression and harassment, and telling of how much you are loved, how much you are missed. A photo accompanied every report; a smiling young man with wavy dark hair that is probably grey now with the years and the suffering behind bars, a beautiful young woman whose once bright eyes probably have turned pale today with pain and sadness, a laughing father sitting amongst his children, wife, parents and siblings before being kidnapped from their midst by Israeli occupation soldiers, a happy mother surrounded by her children before she was separated from them by Israeli jailors, a little boy standing proudly near his new bicycle that is now stacked somewhere full of dust waiting for its owner to come home. Every morning I rush to check the page with your stories in one of the local newspapers. I pass my fingers over your pictures as I read how much you love Msakhan, how you tried to return the little bird to its nest and fell off the olive tree, how you impressed everyone with your dakbeh during your brother’s wedding, how you love writing poetry, how you dreamt of a free Palestine. And then I would wish I was able to free you, bring you back to your loved ones, bring you back to your poetry, to your dabkeh group, to your olive tree, and I would wish I could hug you, each and every one of you, and remove some of your pain away and tell you that you are never forgotten, that your pain is not yours alone, it is ours, all of us, because we are all one: we are Palestinians.

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Joseph Kishore
WSWS

As the 111th congressional session came to a close, the Obama administration and the US media have stepped up the propaganda offensive over the past two days to justify an even further shift to the right by the political establishment next year.

The “narrative” being constructed takes the following form:

The two years of the Democratic-controlled Senate and House of Representatives, along with the Obama administration, carried out historical social reforms on a scale not seen in decades. For some unexplained reason, these measures led to a defeat for the Democrats in the 2010 elections. Since the elections, and supposedly in response to popular pressure, Obama has shifted into a more “bipartisan” spirit, which has already produced fantastic results in the “lame-duck” session since the election.

This eruption of self-congratulation was led by Obama himself at an afternoon press conference on Wednesday. The lame-duck session, the president declared, was “the most productive post-election period we have had in decades, and…it comes on the heels of the most productive two years that we have had in generations.”

The overriding theme of the conference was Obama’s pledge to work with Republicans more closely in the coming year. As a Time magazine article noted (under the headline, “Obama’s Lame-Duck Comeback: Hello, Bipartisanship”), “In his 34-minute press conference on Wednesday [Obama] used the words ‘common ground’ three times, the word ‘bipartisan’ twice, the phrase ‘other side of the aisle’ twice, ‘came together’ three times and ‘across party lines’ twice.”

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Stephen Lendman

"In fact, most Muslims get no justice. They're illegally entrapped and imprisoned for crimes they never planned or committed. Yet America's media affirms guilt by accusation."

A full account of her case from March 2003 through December 2008 can be accessed through this link.

Numerous follow-up articles discussed subsequent events to the present. All are posted chronologically on sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Wrongfully persecuted, she was sentenced to 86 years in prison on September 23, 2010, a gross miscarriage of justice since her March 30, 2003 abduction, imprisonment, torture and witch-hunt prosecution, providing no evidence whatever to convict.

Supporters want her freed. The web site freeaafia.org posts updates on her case and status. It has petitions to sign on her behalf as well as actions to take, including writing her as follows:

Aafia Siddiqui
# 90279-054
FMC Carswell
Federal Medical Center
PO Box 27137
Fort Worth, TX 76127

It also asks those able to contribute to her legal defense and investigation into the disappearance of her son, Suleman, missing for nearly eight years.

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Stephen Lendman

In America's Declaration of Independence, Jefferson declared:

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"all men (are) created equal....with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (code for property). That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends. it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government," serving them "to effect their safety and happiness."

Long established governments shouldn't "be changed for light and transient causes....But when a long train of abuses and usurpations (establishes) absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government," replacing it with one serving everyone equitably.

In addition, Jefferson said "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God." Women's rights advocate Susan B. Anthony also said "I shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the practical recognition of the old revolutionary maxim that 'Resistance to tyranny it obedience to God.' "

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David Michael Green
The Regressive Antidote

In the spirit of the season, let us tell the tale of the Political Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future.

The Political Ghost of Christmas Present showed up in Washington this week to pass an 800 billion dollar tax cut package, a very large chunk of which goes to a very small minority of very rich Americans. That’s a real bummer, given that the distribution of wealth in this country is now so skewed that we make banana republics of the 19th century look good by comparison. I don’t know where that leaves us. Maybe a banana slug republic?

Oh well, at least that’s the total extent of the damage. I mean, it’s not like we’re in tough financial shape or anything, where such a move would represent the very height of fiscal irresponsibility. It’s not like we have to borrow the money to pay for these tax gifts to the wealthy – making them, in reality, tax burden transfers to the less wealthy, and to our children and grandchildren – or anything like that. It’s not like the histrionics of the Democrats in Congress, mounting a faux, five-minute insurrection against the deal and against their own president, don’t emphatically demonstrate once and for all that voters in America have a choice, every time they enter the ballot box, between the Party of Shameless Corporate Hack Assholes That Tries To Pretend It Isn’t, on the one hand, and the Party of Shameless Corporate Hack Assholes That Tries A Little Harder To Pretend It Isn’t, on the other.

And it’s not like there will be any real-world consequences to this latest chapter in the sordid fiscal history of the last thirty years, or anything. A month from now we’ll see the president in his State of the Union address once again linking arms with the (out) Republicans, telling us that we must cut Medicare and Social Security and infrastructure and government payrolls, so that we can afford these yet more gigantic tax cuts for the wealthy, disastrous and murderous wars across the Middle East, and a military budget the size of the rest of the planet, combined. Now we see the “starve the beast” long-haul strategy of the oligarchs about to reach its full fruition. The debt was always intentional. It was the only way to pry out of the cold, stiff fingers of Americans the programs they favor so much they are referred to as the third rail of American politics.

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Philip Giraldi
Antiwar

Members of Congress are beholden to a powerful pro-
Israel lobby.

Most Americans have a negative perception of Congress. It is not hard to figure out why when one learns that most congressmen spend much of their time raising money so they can be reelected. I for one am not bothered by that aspect of the legislative experience because I believe that if they are out pursuing money they are keeping out of trouble, except when they are simultaneously raising the cash illegally and concealing large packages of it in their freezers.

When Congress actually sits down and does something, hold on to your hat and wallet. Last week the House passed "unanimously" what might be described as a stealth resolution in that the document was only made public a day before being voted on, allowing no time for genuine debate or review by legislators and voters. When it was finally tabled, it received a voice vote, in which those present say aye or nay, with the speaker declaring whether the resolution passes or not. Unlike a "record" vote, there is no easy way to determine who voted which way or, indeed, who was present when the vote was taken. It is the ultimate democracy in action cop out, enabling congressmen to behave completely irresponsibly.

The resolution in question was – surprise, surprise – on the Middle East, another expression of the will of Congress and the American people that Israel should be able to do anything it wants and the Palestinians should be grateful that they have not been completely exterminated. House Resolution 1765 "Supporting a negotiated solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict and condemning unilateral measures to declare or recognize a Palestinian state, and for other purposes." The resolution was drafted by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and sponsored by Congressman Howard Berman, currently Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. There were 53 co-sponsors.

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Robert Bows

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
~ William Butler Yeats, The Second Coming, 1920

One of the techniques of successful propaganda is to repeat a statement over and over again until people believe it to be true, as any encounter with the media and the pulpit amply demonstrates. So, to transform the world into a sustainable and progressive place, we must deconstruct the underlying lies promulgated by the mouthpieces of plutocratic propaganda, by which they justify the current state of affairs.

Given the increasing gap between rich and poor, the sharp spike in religious fundamentalism, and the impunity with which corporate-controlled states seize resources to which they have no legitimate claim, one of our first priorities must be to disable the use of religious dogma to justify greed and war.

Since surveys indicate that three-quarters of Americans consider themselves to be Christians, let’s begin there.[1]

It has become a tenet of faith for many Christians that they can simultaneously practice their religion and conduct economic affairs in their own self interest. Indeed, ever since the Protestant Reformation arose from the pressures of the Industrial Revolution, the pulpits of Christianity have been used to turn wealth (economic success) into an indication of favor from God.

Let’s go back to the source of Christianity and see if such thinking holds up.

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Stephen Lendman

In place since 1978, it lets authorities detain and/or deport foreign nationals and other non-citizens suspected of human rights violations, alleged threats to national security, or claimed affiliation with organized crime, using (usually bogus) secret evidence withheld from defense counsel.

Since 1991, 27 residents have been affected. In February 2007, Canada's Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in Charkaoui v. Canada. However, eight months later in October, the Canadian House of Commons passed Bill C-3 (a so-called anti-terror measure), amending the 2001 Immigration and Refugee Protection Act by introducing a special advocate into the certificate process on the pretext of protecting subjects during secret proceedings.

That and other provisions are troubling, including indefinite detentions, with or without charges, draconian house arrest with continuous monitoring and surveillance, and deportations to despotic states unjustly. Doing so assures torture, imprisonment or death. It's why subjects fled to Canada, believing they'd be safe.

The special advocate provision is reprehensible, providing legal cover for a fundamentally unjust process designed to stigmatize, vilify, convict, imprison, or deport mostly innocent victims to oblivion, pretending national and public security were protected.

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