August 14, 2008 11:00 AM
Mike's Blog Roundup
Jack & Jill Politics: An important message from Rick Santorum
Words of Power: We live in a nation that has lost touch with reality.
Obsidian Wings: It just should not be possible for our government to kidnap someone, ship him off to Syria knowing that he will be tortured, and then have no one be in any way accountable.
Petrelis Files: That reporters must give up some basic rights if they're denied, or even receive, credentials makes me queasy about how the national debates for presidential candidates will be conducted.
The Washington Independent: Look who's back...
Threat Level: Experts accuse the Bush administration of foot-dragging on DNS security hole
Dropping out of the McCain campaign seems to mean "laying low until the dust clears".
Gramm is not the first drop-out to make a secret return.
I hope that Mr ricky santorum crawls back under what ever rock he's been hiding under
"It just should not be possible for our government to kidnap someone, ship him off to Syria knowing that he will be tortured, and then have no one be in any way accountable."
no doubt.
nor should it be possible to do this in iraq, bagram AFB, eastern europe, gitmo, diego garcia, ships floating in int'l waters... but the govt/corp do it anyway.
and this is not some new development either. it is a tried and true imperial practice that is both disgusting and something we have a lot of practice with.
Phil Gramm, Lieberman, McCain...geez...what constituency do THEY represent? Certainly not me.
When I am old and grey I am going to do what every other generation (save for the McCain generation), get the hell out of the way, and turn it over to young ideas, energy and viewpoints.
These wrinkled up old bastards need to accept that they are wrinkled up old bastards, and that they're day is done. They have no business proposing legislation that will have no impact on them because they'll be taking a dirt nap.
Words of Power has it right. The US sucks at following what's going on in the world. At best, one or two things are reported on at any one time. And with the usual twisted priorities of MSM. (How many hours did CNN spend in the weeks before the Olympics reporting on the _weather_ in Beijing?)
Of course, the Olympics are a big event. Especially in the USA, which I believe devotes a larger share of its media coverage to the Olympics than any other country. And OTOH, why is it a big event? Because the media covers it so intensely.
So people simply don't know s--t about anything until something happens. Then all the pundits come out and you see the people who couldn't find Georgia on a map a week ago are suddenly "experts" on the situation. But they're not experts. Which is the REAL problem here - this increasing irrationalist tendency in the US to treat opinion as if it were a substitute for knowledge.
So, with a lack of knowledge, we fall back on old knee-jerk reactions from the Cold War. Russia are evil imperialist bastards. But we're exempt from that label, because we're "the good guys". The Cold War may be over, but its blatant hypocrisy lives on. So they tell us that now, in the 21st century, "Nations don't invade other nations".
We should be grateful McCain isn't president, or the rest of the world might've taken notice of that remark. And what do you think they'd say about it? What impression would it give them of America?
Where are the tears for the Efe and the Kongo and the other peoples of the Democratic Republic of the Congo? Mass rape's even worse there than in Darfur or Burma. Oh, but there's no coverage even by those who dare reveal the secrets that the MSM's covering up, so the DRC might as well have vanished off the face of the Earth to youse guys, eh?
Bullshit. Darfur's bad, but the events in the Congo have introduced both mass rape on a much grander scale and cannibalism. Why doesn't that get covered as much as the events in the Sudan?
I already have a couple of answers, so don't answer that rhetorical question.
General_rennenkampf @ 6:
No one cares about brown people, except other brown people.
Alexdem @ 5:
Russia's led by imperialists bastards. We're led by imperialist bastards. Is it so hard to see that the Russians might be smarting from the dissolution of the USSR and want to rebuild their old empire? If I was in Vladimir Putin's place right now, I'dve done what he did.
The US was no less imperialistic or brutal than the USSR in a lot of ways (aside from most of the outright thuggery having been in the previous century while the USSR's atrocities were nice and fresh), but we were simply better off to do it, as we didn't lose 20 million of our people due to the jackass in the Kremlin deciding to waste Russian lives as he scrambled to fix his purge of his army even after the brutal, expansionistic Hitler government came to power in Germany, and we had almost no damage on our mainland from WWII, whereas the vast majority of the USSR's population belts were smoldering ruins after the guns fell silent. Had the situation been reversed, the Soviets might well have won the Cold War as easily as we did.
As for the impression it would have given us of it, it would be hypocrisy, of course, something virtually no government has been immune from ever.
Liberal AND Proud @ 7:
From what I gather, not even the other brown people care. What's happening to those pygmies is barbarism on a level not seen since Mao or Pol Pot, but nobody gives a damn because Darfur's more accessible, for one thing.
"Nobody will be safe... I'm not trying to scare anybody!" - Georgian President today.
Classic.
The press conference was shared with Condi Rice so the sounds of fascism were totally expected, they need some refinement though, but for now they certainly make every neo-con proud.
"Nobody will be safe... I'm not trying to scare anybody!" The second part shows that there's still some hope, there's still some humanity left.
General_rennenkampf @ 6:
Mornin General...
What an evil world this has become.
Sometimes I think the best thing that could happen to this planet would be a giant meteor or comet strike that wipes out all us filthy humans.
As a species that is supposed to be smarter than any other life form on the planet, we sure do manage to screw up the basics, while other "lesser" life forms live in harmony with other "lesser" life forms...maybe we do deserve extinction.
liberalNmoderation @ 11:
Depends on what you call harmony. Ants and chimps, to name just two species, are just as prone to what humans define as warfare as we are.
I think that Indian ideas on the relationship of man to the environment will be ultimately more sustainable than the ideas of the West, if only because an animal that considers itself separate from its ecosystem rapidly dooms itself.
This world has always been evil, and we've always been a species of bastards. Just ask Neanderthals, Erectus, or Hobbits if you can find them, that is.
General_rennenkampf @ 12:
Well of course, but their warfare is a good deal less destructive to the environment, or to other species.
Indeed, the Native Americans way of life before the Europeans came and fucked it all up was ideal. But the vast majority of westerners are too fond of their creature comforts to live in such a manner.
It's not the world that's always been evil...it's people.
General_rennenkampf @ 8:
I don't disagree. I was just sayin', you know. Although, it's worth pointing out that Russia was mucking about in Caucasus since well before the Soviet Union. And it's not new to the US either. (Umm.. what was it we were doing over in the Philippines a century ago? :)
True. But there are still degrees of hypocrisy. And the world would be less annoyed if we were less blatant about it.
liberalNmoderation @ 13:
Um...
For some reason, I think the Indians in the Valley of Anahuac disagreed with your conclusion when they decided to help Cortez sack and destroy Tenochtitlan. Certainly, the Sapa Inkas of Tawantinsuyu would find your ideas surprising, they rather enjoyed territorial expansion, just as much as contemporary Europeans did. Indians did not live an ideal life any more than anyone else has ever done, there was just as much bastardliness in pre-Columbian America as there was once the Europeans arrived.
Their definition of warfare, though, typically was not as dedicated to outright slaughter as the European-Islamic modes were. Indians in the United States often found European methods of warfare to be (pun not intended) savagery, while the whites called them savages, despite whites often deserting to live with Indians because Indians had a greater bonhomie than the whites did.
Indians were not ideal, but neither was the West or China or India or Australia of that era. "Ideal" varies with the times and the seasons.
Well since there is no open thread yet and I've seen several instances of ignorant trolls claiming that chenney didn't try to intentionally start a new cold war, here's some info which explains just that, unfortunately I can't link directly to the PNAC site as the cowards seem to be lying low for now.
from http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO503A.html
from http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2003/03/11/a-wilful-blindness/
And as further proof we have chenney antagonizing Putin on several occasions, one example being when it was complaining that Russia's democracy was not a real democracy (this coming from one of the douches who has tried to make the unitary executive an acceptable idea). So yeah, a new cold war has been in the works by our insane folks of PNAC except this time, they are considering anyone who might challenge the US's dominance a thread including the EU, China, and Russia. There was an article that detailed that, but it unfortunately is now gone, f'ing PNACers.
General_rennenkampf @ 15:
General, I stand corrected, and I admit my limited knowledge of the different tribes obviously can't hold a candle to yours.
all hail the hypno toad @ 16:
Have you looked at the Project for the Old American Century? POAC...
I believe they have an article outlining the PNAC's plan.
I'll see if it's still there BRB.
Here ya go...ALL Hail the Hypno Toad!
http://poac.wordpress.com/2006/12/19/a-brief-history-of-the-pnac-a-refre...
By the way...the POAC is a KICKASS site. I recommend everyone check it out. Throw 'em a few bucks if ya can.
liberalNmoderation @ 19:
I'm familiar with that site, I was trying to find the original document that detailed the EU/China/Russia threat, though unfortunately there's only bits and pieces of it.
General_rennenkampf @ 6:
But who can do anything about the DRC? The USA isn't interested, and is already way over-extended in foreign policy. Europe's not going to do anything - even the name itself: "Congo", is heavily charged there with remembrance of colonial atrocities and horror. I don't think they feel anything good could come from them getting back in there. The UN? What - and get another Secretary-General killed?
Congo's not for us (the West). Maybe it's time for the African Union to be put to the test?
http://firedoglake.com/2008/08/15/looking-for-hate-in-all-the-wrong-plac...
Two days ago, a gunman walked into the offices of the Democratic Party in Little Rock, Arkansas, and shot the state's chairman to death. The motives are still unclear, but it is starting increasingly to look like yet another case in which an unhinged wingnut decided to "take out" more liberals.
Two weeks ago, another gunman walked into a liberal Unitarian Universalist church in Knoxville, Tennessee, and began shooting, killing one man and wounding several others before he was tackled. He had written a manifesto before the rampage indicating his belief that "all liberals should be killed." At his home, investigators found books attacking liberals by the likes of Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, and ... Bill O'Reilly.
These issues have, of course, never been discussed on Bill O'Reilly's Fox News program. O'Reilly has never even mentioned the fact that the Knoxville shooter read his books and evidently watched his show. Indeed, his show not only constantly demonizes liberals, O'Reilly frequently does so by accusing liberals of being the source of vicious hatemongering -- as he did Wednesday, in the segment above, in which he informs us that "the real haters in America are on the far left" -- even though the majority of the quotes they cite are from anonymous commenters and diarists, and in every case the host site has removed them.
But as BradBlog noticed, one need only go to the Townhall.com site that hosts of Amanda Carpenter, his guest in this segment, to find prime examples of right-wing hate directed at liberals -- and no apparent attempt made to remove them. A sample, from Hugh Hewitt's blog:
A day of reckoning approaches... (Why is it liberal traitors like Brob feel they have to resort to profanity to make points? Because they equate emotionalism with reality - "If I scream loud enough and make enough of a scene, I'll get my way". Ten-year-old potty-mouthed brats, all of them.)
And I said traitors intentionally. I know more than one military man and woman stationed overseas who cannot wait to rotate back once the job over there is done and complete the work of fighting all enemies foreign AND domestic, Posse Comitatus be damned, and hunt down the Copperheads in our midst.
Traitors, be afraid. Be very afraid.
There's plenty more, of course, where this came from. And you can always find similar sentiments at O'Reilly's site, where again no effort is ever made to remove such commentary.
But, I suppose, we "Nazis" on the left are responsible for this. Probably because we just always inspire these sentiments, so therefore it's our fault.
THESE KINDS OF BIGOTS AND MURDERERS KILLED JOHN KENNEDY, BOBBY, MARTIN LUTHER KING. THE UGLY HEAD OF RACISM AND BIGOTRY IS COMING UNGLUED. THE PEOPLE OF IRAQ ALL READY KNOW THIS. I HAVE HEARD "SOME" U.S. MILITARY AND SOME WHITE FOLKS WITH CROSSES AROUND THEIR NECKS SCREAM "KILL THEM ALL" WHEN THEY REFER TO IRAQ OR ANYWHERE IN THE MIDDLE EAST WITH THE EXCEPTION OF ISRAEL. THE WHOLE WORLD FEARS THIS VERY UGLY PART OF THE U.S. AND THEY SHOULD
Alert to Crooks and Liars bloggers and readers. Have you listened to Democracy Now's Amy Goodmans interview with investigative journalist Ron Suskind. He was on both Wednesday and Thursday. Really worth the time
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/13/the_way_of_the_world_ron
The Way of the World: Ron Suskind on How the Bush Admin Deliberately Faked an Iraq-al-Qaeda Connection and Undermined Diplomacy, Democracy in Pakistan and Iran
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Judiciary Committee say they will review allegations the White House ordered the CIA to forge and disseminate false intelligence documents linking al-Qaeda and Iraq. The revelation is among several in Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Suskind’s explosive new book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism. Suskind joins us for the hour to talk about the letter controversy and the thin denials that have followed its disclosure. He also reveals details of his lengthy conversations with the late Pakistani politician Benazir Bhutto and her frustrations with the Bush administration in the months before her assassination, and discloses assassination, and discloses the previously unknown case of an interrogation “cell” beneath the White House. [includes rush transcript]
Thursday's program
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/14/after_ron_suskind_reveals_bush_admin
After Ron Suskind Reveals Bush Admin Ordered Iraq-9/11 Fakery, House Judiciary Chair John Conyers Opens Congressional Probe
liberalNmoderation @ 19:
Try 3 (not letting me post for some reason)
I am familiar with that site though I was hoping to find the original document detailing the "threat" of the EU/China/Russia but unfortunately all I could find were bits and pieces.
Alexdem @ 14:
Russia's been mucking around in the Caucasus ever since the first Tsar that could get there got there. As for the US, we've been engaged in imperialism since 1607 and 1621. Just ask the Indians.
Alexdem @ 21:
I wish the African Union was more than a paper tiger. Unfortunately, that's exactly what it is.
Belgium should go in and fix the mess it left behind.
As for Threatlevel's link about the government (Bush/Cheney) footdragging on the DNS vulnerability...the reason is simple:
I cannot recall where I read about but during the last couple of weeks was an article about plans to essentially kill the internet. By "kill the internet", what is meant is a set of policies and programs put into place to gut the free and open nature of the internet, as well as eliminate any anonymity as well. The model: Patriot Act in response to 9/11 and the government-sponsored anthrax attack.
The Patriot Act was HUGE and, "amazingly", was very swiftly ready to be dumped upon Congress and pushed - HARD - by the Admin very shortly after the two attacks. It was ready and pushed so hard that no Congresscriminal in either House or Senate actually READ the bill in full. They quickly scanned it, accepted the Administration synopsis of what it did, and voted for it. It was clear that the Patriot Act was essentially pre-written and waiting for an opportunity to be unveiled and forced through as quickly as possible. The article about killing the internet indicated that there was another pre-written package of legislation waiting in the wings having to do with "net security" and that it was merely sitting in waiting until some internet "security incident" occurred that could be used to rush it through Congress as per the Patriot Act. It will be rushed with the idea being that Congress, as before, will vote FOR it without actually reading it.
Bush is "foot-dragging" because he wants the DNS vulnerabilty to be exploited in a big way so that the Patriot Act for the Internet can be dumped upon Congress and pushed through quickly and unread.
Be forewarned. Bush IS waiting for/hoping for a big exploit of the DNS vulnerability so that he and his neocon cronies can murder the free, open internet.
Kinda my mood today:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STWSTgfMruc
McCain camp sued for using "Running on Empty" song in ad without permission:
http://www.cbc.ca/arts/music/story/2008/08/15/jackson-browne.html?ref=rss
Who would win in a fight
A paper tiger
Or a scissor swan?
Follow the Money. Follow the defense contractors
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/08/14/us-poland-reach-agreement_n_119...
WARSAW, Poland — Poland and the United States struck a deal Thursday that will strengthen military ties and put an American missile interceptor base in Poland, a plan that has infuriated Moscow and sparked fears in Europe of a new arms race.
ANYONE KNOW WHO THE DEFENSE CONTRACTORS ARE WHO PUSHED FOR THE MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEM IN POLAND? DO THEY HAVE ANY CONNECTIONS TO THE FOLKS WHO PUTIN KICKED OUT OF RUSSIA FOR TRYING TO HIJACK THE OIL INDUSTRY?
WOOLSEY, FEITH, PERLE INVOLVED?
Kathleen @ 29:
Why wouldn't Poland want that? I'm serious on this. Russia's proven quite willing to gobble up Poland when opportunity presents itself. From a Polish perspective, having weapons to keep the Bear from eating it like it did in the days of the Commonwealth and 1939, then restoring the state only to make it a satellite state, makes all too much sense.
The Poles probably pushed for it as a territorial guarantor more effective than the rest of Europe, which has the balls of an orangutan.
all hail the hypno toad @ 24:
Yeah, the site has been "suspended" whatever that means...
Kathleen @ 22:
Geeeezus H. Christ.
That's kinda scary shit there...I say again, we must all arm ourselves. NOW.
Ah, due process! I'm sure that Cheney will tell us that's "quaint," too...
Praedor Atrebates @ 27:
Let me see if I can figure out who some of the sponsors are, let's see, the RIAA and MPAA perhaps? They've only been trying to kill the internet for a while and it has nothing to do with piracy but about control. Wouldn't shock me.
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