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  1. Atypical is offline
    01-27-2015, 11:46 AM #261
    Cont'd (Starts at post 258)

    Kyle was given the nickname “Legend.” He got a tattoo of a Crusader cross on his arm. “I wanted everyone to know I was a Christian. I had it put in red, for blood. I hated the damn savages I’d been fighting,” he wrote. “I always will.” Following a day of sniping, after killing perhaps as many as six people, he would go back to his barracks to spent his time smoking Cuban Romeo y Julieta No. 3 cigars and “playing video games, watching porn and working out.” On leave, something omitted in the movie, he was frequently arrested for drunken bar fights. He dismissed politicians, hated the press and disdained superior officers, exalting only the comradeship of warriors. His memoir glorifies white, “Christian” supremacy and war. It is an angry tirade directed against anyone who questions the military’s elite, professional killers.

    “For some reason, a lot of people back home—not all people—didn’t accept that we were at war,” he wrote. “They didn’t accept that war means death, violent death, most times. A lot of people, not just politicians, wanted to impose ridiculous fantasies on us, hold us to some standard of behavior that no human being could maintain.”

    The enemy sniper Mustafa, portrayed in the film as if he was a serial killer, fatally wounds Kyle’s comrade Ryan “Biggles” Job. In the movie Kyle returns to Iraq—his fourth tour—to extract revenge for Biggles’ death. This final tour, at least in the film, centered on the killing of The Butcher and the enemy sniper, also a fictional character. As it focuses on the dramatic duel between hero Kyle and villain Mustafa the movie becomes ridiculously cartoonish.

    Kyle gets Mustafa in his sights and pulls the trigger. The bullet is shown leaving the rifle in slow motion. “Do it for Biggles,” someone says. The enemy sniper’s head turns into a puff of blood.

    “Biggles would be proud of you,” a soldier says. “You did it, man.”

    His final tour over, Kyle leaves the Navy. As a civilian he struggles with the demons of war and becomes, at least in the film, a model father and husband and works with veterans who were maimed in Iraq and Afghanistan. He trades his combat boots for cowboy boots.

    The real-life Kyle, as the film was in production, was shot dead at a shooting range near Dallas on Feb. 2, 2013, along with a friend, Chad Littlefield. A former Marine, Eddie Ray Routh, who had been suffering from PTSD and severe psychological episodes, allegedly killed the two men and then stole Kyle’s pickup truck. Routh will go on trial next month. The film ends with scenes of Kyle’s funeral procession—thousands lined the roads waving flags—and the memorial service at the Dallas Cowboys’ home stadium. It shows fellow SEALs pounding their tridents into the top of his coffin, a custom for fallen comrades. Kyle was shot in the back and the back of his head. Like so many people he dispatched, he never saw his killer when the fatal shots were fired.

    The culture of war banishes the capacity for pity. It glorifies self-sacrifice and death. It sees pain, ritual humiliation and violence as part of an initiation into manhood. Brutal hazing, as Kyle noted in his book, was an integral part of becoming a Navy SEAL. New SEALs would be held down and choked by senior members of the platoon until they passed out. The culture of war idealizes only the warrior. It belittles those who do not exhibit the warrior’s “manly” virtues. It places a premium on obedience and loyalty. It punishes those who engage in independent thought and demands total conformity. It elevates cruelty and killing to a virtue. This culture, once it infects wider society, destroys all that makes the heights of human civilization and democracy possible. The capacity for empathy, the cultivation of wisdom and understanding, the tolerance and respect for difference and even love are ruthlessly crushed. The innate barbarity that war and violence breed is justified by a saccharine sentimentality about the nation, the flag and a perverted Christianity that blesses its armed crusaders. This sentimentality, as Baldwin wrote, masks a terrifying numbness. It fosters an unchecked narcissism. Facts and historical truths, when they do not fit into the mythic vision of the nation and the tribe, are discarded. Dissent becomes treason. All opponents are godless and subhuman. “American Sniper” caters to a deep sickness rippling through our society. It holds up the dangerous belief that we can recover our equilibrium and our lost glory by embracing an American fascism.

    http://act.alternet.org/go/57027?t=9...1.38018.5wJLo7
    Last edited by Atypical; 01-27-2015 at 08:38 PM.

  2. Atypical is offline
    03-01-2015, 07:26 PM #262
    You're Not the Boss of Me! Why Libertarianism Is a Childish Sham.

    Libertarians believe they're rebels, but they are really political children who scream through tears.

    By David Masciotra / AlterNet February 26, 2015

    Libertarians believe themselves controversial and cool. They're desperate to package themselves as dangerous rebels, but in reality they are champions of conformity. Their irreverence and their opposition to “political correctness” is little more than a fashion accessory, disguising their subservience to—for all their protests against the “political elite”—the real elite.

    Ayn Rand is the rebel queen of their icy kingdom, villifying empathy and solidarity. Christopher Hitchens, in typical blunt force fashion, undressed Rand and her libertarian followers, exposing their obsequiousness toward the operational standards of a selfish society: “I have always found it quaint, and rather touching, that there is a movement in the US that thinks Americans are not yet selfish enough.”

    Libertarians believe they are real rebels, because they’ve politicized the protest of children who scream through tears, “You’re not the boss of me.” The rejection of all rules and regulations, and the belief that everyone should have the ability to do whatever they want, is not rebellion or dissent. It is infantile naïveté.

    As much as libertarians boast of having a “political movement” gaining in popularity, “you’re not the boss of me” does not even rise to the most elementary level of politics. Aristotle translated “politics” into meaning “the things concerning the polis,” referring to the city, or in other words, the community. Confucius connected politics with ethics, and his ethics are attached to communal service with a moral system based on empathy. A political program, like that from the right, that eliminates empathy, and denies the collective, is anti-political.

    Opposition to any conception of the public interest and common good, and the consistent rejection of any opportunity to organize communities in the interest of solidarity, is not only a vicious form of anti-politics, it is affirmation of America’s most dominant and harmful dogmas. In America, selfishness, like blue jeans or a black dress, never goes out of style. It is the style. The founding fathers, for all the hagiographic praise and worship they receive as ritual in America, had no significant interest in freedom beyond their own social station, regardless of the poetry they put on paper. Native Americans, women, black Americans, and anyone who did not own property could not vote, but “taxation without representation” was the rallying cry of the revolution. The founders reacted with righteous rage to an injustice to their class, but demonstrated no passion or prioritization of expanding their victory for liberty to anyone who did not look, think, or spend money like them.

    Many years after the nation’s establishment as an independent republic, President Calvin Coolidge quipped, “The chief business of the American people is business.” It is easy to extrapolate from that unintentional indictment how, in a rejection of alternative conceptions of philosophy and morality, America continually reinforced Alexis De Tocqueville’s prescient 1831 observation, “As one digs deeper into the national character of Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: How much money will it bring in?”

    The disasters of reducing life, the governance of affairs, and the distribution of resources to such a shallow standard leaves wreckage where among the debris one can find human bodies. Studies indicate that nearly 18,000 Americans die every year because they lack comprehensive health insurance. Designing a healthcare system with the question, “How much money will it bring in?” at the center, kills instead of cures.

    The denial of the collective interest and communal bond, as much as libertarians like to pose as trailblazers, is not the road less traveled, but the highway in gridlock. Competitive individualism, and the perversion of personal responsibility to mean social irresponsibility, is what allows for America to limp behind the rest of the developed world in providing for the poor and creating social services for the general population.

    It also leads to the elevation of crude utility as a measurement of anything’s purpose or value. Richard Hofstadter, observed in his classic Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, that many Americans are highly intelligent, but their intelligence is functional, not intellectual. They excel at their occupational tasks, but do not invest the intellect or imagination in abstract, critical, or philosophical inquiries and ideas. If society is reducible to the individual, and the individual is reducible to consumer capacity, the duties of democracy and the pleasures of creativity stand little chance of competing with the call of the cash register.

    Wisconsin governor Scott Walker recently stepped on a landmine when he suggested that the Wisconsin university system remove from its mission statement any language having to do with public service or meaning of life. Education should only train people to work. Walker might have faced mockery and scorn for his proposal, but any college instructor can verify my experience of struggling to convince even a handful of students to consider the importance of ideas not directly related to their career choices.

    Meanwhile pop culture, still having not recovered from mistaking the Oliver Stone villain Gordon Gekko and his “greed is good” philosophy as heroic, bombards Americans with reality television programs about shallow and self-destructive rich people whose mansions, jewelry, vehicles, and fashion choices are treated with a religious reverence. Their lives are in despair and disarray, but they find redemption through consumption.

    Cont'd below

  3. Atypical is offline
    03-01-2015, 07:26 PM #263
    Cont'd from above

    Who then are the libertarians rebelling against? The most powerful sector of the society is corporate America, and it profits and benefits most from the deregulatory and anti-tax measures libertarians champion. That sector of society also happens to own the federal government. Through large campaign donations and aggressive lobbying – the very corruption that libertarians help enable by defending Citizens United and opposing campaign finance reform – they have institutionalized bribery, transforming the legislative process into an auction. Libertarians proclaim an anti-government position, but they are only opposing the last measures of protection that remain in place to prevent the government from full mutation into an aristocracy. By advocating for the removal of all social programs, libertarians are not rebelling, as much as they are reinforcing the prevailing ethos of “bootstrap” capitalism. The poor are responsible for their plight, and therefore deserve no sympathy or assistance.

    When children yell “you’re not the boss of me” they believe they are launching a rebellion against the household establishment, but they are conforming to the codes of behavior visible among all children. Libertarians are attempting to practice the same political voodoo – transforming conformity into rebellion – without realizing that their cries for freedom coalesce with their childlike culture.

    The philosopher Charles Taylor explains in his book, The Ethics of Authenticity, that the search for self-actualization is a noble and important enterprise in life. Authenticity is important, and people should not compromise their principles or passions to placate expectations of society. Taylor complicates the picture by adding the elemental truth of individuality and community that personal freedom is empty and meaningless without connections to “horizons of significance.” That beautiful phrase captures the essentiality of developing bonds of empathy and ties of solidarity with people outside of one’s own individual pursuits, and within a larger social context. Neighborhoods, religious institutions, political parties, advocacy organizations, charities, and social justice groups all qualify as “horizons of significance”, and the connections that arise out of those horizons inevitably producs politics of communal ethics and public responsibility, in addition to private liberty.

    Encouraging and facilitating connections of love that revolutionize individual freedom into motivation for social justice, and reform politics to adhere to the truth of Cornel West’s insight that “justice is what love looks like in public” represents real rebellion in America. Defending and championing selfish indifference to collective interest and need conforms not only to the mainstream American practice of social neglect, but also to the most basic and brutish impulse of humanity’s mammalian origins. The rebel searches for higher ground. The conformist crawls through the shallow end of the swamp.

    http://act.alternet.org/go/58327?t=2...3.38018.d5l0Rn

    _________________________________________

    Libertarianism is allegedly against so much that almost everyone can find something to agree with. But underneath those great-sounding positions lurks an extreme ignorance of reality that this essay examines. Any powerful entity can abuse and frequently does. How we control that and what will the consequences be from that effort is not as easily known as some think.
    Last edited by Atypical; 03-01-2015 at 07:43 PM.

  4. Atypical is offline
    05-29-2015, 08:19 AM #264
    Pentagon Report Predicted West's Support for Islamist Rebels Would Create ISIS

    Tuesday, 26 May 2015 00:00
    By Nafeez Ahmed, INSURGE intelligence | News Analysis

    A declassified secret US government document obtained by the conservative public interest law firm, Judicial Watch, shows that Western governments deliberately allied with al-Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups to topple Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad.

    The document reveals that in coordination with the Gulf states and Turkey, the West intentionally sponsored violent Islamist groups to destabilize Assad, and that these "supporting powers" desired the emergence of a "Salafist Principality" in Syria to "isolate the Syrian regime."

    According to the newly declassified US document, the Pentagon foresaw the likely rise of the 'Islamic State' as a direct consequence of this strategy, and warned that it could destabilize Iraq. Despite anticipating that Western, Gulf state and Turkish support for the "Syrian opposition" — which included al-Qaeda in Iraq — could lead to the emergence of an 'Islamic State' in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the document provides no indication of any decision to reverse the policy of support to the Syrian rebels. On the contrary, the emergence of an al-Qaeda affiliated "Salafist Principality" as a result is described as a strategic opportunity to isolate Assad.

    Hypocrisy

    The revelations contradict the official line of Western governments on their policies in Syria, and raise disturbing questions about secret Western support for violent extremists abroad, while using the burgeoning threat of terror to justify excessive mass surveillance and crackdowns on civil liberties at home.

    Among the batch of documents obtained by Judicial Watch through a federal lawsuit, released earlier this week, is a US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document then classified as "secret," dated 12th August 2012.

    The DIA provides military intelligence in support of planners, policymakers and operations for the US Department of Defense and intelligence community.

    So far, media reporting has focused on the evidence that the Obama administration knew of arms supplies from a Libyan terrorist stronghold to rebels in Syria.

    Some outlets have reported the US intelligence community's internal prediction of the rise of ISIS. Yet none have accurately acknowledged the disturbing details exposing how the West knowingly fostered a sectarian, al-Qaeda-driven rebellion in Syria.

    Charles Shoebridge, a former British Army and Metropolitan Police counter-terrorism intelligence officer, said:

    "Given the political leanings of the organisation that obtained these documents, it's unsurprising that the main emphasis given to them thus far has been an attempt to embarrass Hilary Clinton regarding what was known about the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi in 2012. However, the documents also contain far less publicized revelations that raise vitally important questions of the West's governments and media in their support of Syria's rebellion."

    The West's Islamists

    The newly declassified DIA document from 2012 confirms that the main component of the anti-Assad rebel forces by this time comprised Islamist insurgents affiliated to groups that would lead to the emergence of ISIS. Despite this, these groups were to continue receiving support from Western militaries and their regional allies.

    Noting that "the Salafist [sic], the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [al-Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria," the document states that "the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition," while Russia, China and Iran "support the [Assad] regime."

    The 7-page DIA document states that al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI), the precursor to the 'Islamic State in Iraq,' (ISI) which became the 'Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,' "supported the Syrian opposition from the beginning, both ideologically and through the media."

    The formerly secret Pentagon report notes that the "rise of the insurgency in Syria" has increasingly taken a "sectarian direction," attracting diverse support from Sunni "religious and tribal powers" across the region.

    In a section titled 'The Future Assumptions of the Crisis,' the DIA report predicts that while Assad's regime will survive, retaining control over Syrian territory, the crisis will continue to escalate "into proxy war."

    The document also recommends the creation of "safe havens under international sheltering, similar to what transpired in Libya when Benghazi was chosen as the command centre for the temporary government."

    In Libya, anti-Gaddafi rebels, most of whom were al-Qaeda affiliated militias, were protected by NATO 'safe havens' (aka 'no fly zones').

    'Supporting powers want' ISIS entity

    In a strikingly prescient prediction, the Pentagon document explicitly forecasts the probable declaration of "an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria."

    Nevertheless, "Western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey are supporting these efforts" by Syrian "opposition forces" fighting to "control the eastern areas (Hasaka and Der Zor), adjacent to Western Iraqi provinces (Mosul and Anbar)":

    "… there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)."
    The secret Pentagon document thus provides extraordinary confirmation that the US-led coalition currently fighting ISIS, had three years ago welcomed the emergence of an extremist "Salafist Principality" in the region as a way to undermine Assad, and block off the strategic expansion of Iran. Crucially, Iraq is labeled as an integral part of this "Shia expansion."

    The establishment of such a "Salafist Principality" in eastern Syria, the DIA document asserts, is "exactly" what the "supporting powers to the [Syrian] opposition want." Earlier on, the document repeatedly describes those "supporting powers" as "the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey."

    Cont'd Below
    Last edited by Atypical; 05-29-2015 at 08:37 AM.

  5. Atypical is offline
    05-29-2015, 08:21 AM #265
    Cont'd

    Further on, the document reveals that Pentagon analysts were acutely aware of the dire risks of this strategy, yet ploughed ahead anyway.

    The establishment of such a "Salafist Principality" in eastern Syria, it says, would create "the ideal atmosphere for AQI to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi." Last summer, ISIS conquered Mosul in Iraq, and just this month has also taken control of Ramadi.

    Such a quasi-state entity will provide:

    "… a renewed momentum under the presumption of unifying the jihad among Sunni Iraq and Syria, and the rest of the Sunnis in the Arab world against what it considers one enemy. ISI could also declare an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria, which will create grave danger in regards to unifying Iraq and the protection of territory."
    The 2012 DIA document is an Intelligence Information Report (IIR), not a "finally evaluated intelligence" assessment, but its contents are vetted before distribution. The report was circulated throughout the US intelligence community, including to the State Department, Central Command, the Department of Homeland Security, the CIA, FBI, among other agencies.

    In response to my questions about the strategy, the British government simply denied the Pentagon report's startling revelations of deliberate Western sponsorship of violent extremists in Syria. A British Foreign Office spokesperson said:

    "AQ and ISIL are proscribed terrorist organisations. The UK opposes all forms of terrorism. AQ, ISIL, and their affiliates pose a direct threat to the UK's national security. We are part of a military and political coalition to defeat ISIL in Iraq and Syria, and are working with international partners to counter the threat from AQ and other terrorist groups in that region. In Syria we have always supported those moderate opposition groups who oppose the tyranny of Assad and the brutality of the extremists."

    The DIA did not respond to request for comment.

    Strategic asset for regime-change

    Security analyst Shoebridge, however, who has tracked Western support for Islamist terrorists in Syria since the beginning of the war, pointed out that the secret Pentagon intelligence report exposes fatal contradictions at the heart of official pronunciations:

    "Throughout the early years of the Syria crisis, the US and UK governments, and almost universally the West's mainstream media, promoted Syria's rebels as moderate, liberal, secular, democratic, and therefore deserving of the West's support. Given that these documents wholly undermine this assessment, it's significant that the West's media has now, despite their immense significance, almost entirely ignored them."

    According to Brad Hoff, a former US Marine who served during the early years of the Iraq War and as a 9/11 first responder at the Marine Corps Headquarters Battalion in Quantico from 2000 to 2004, the just released Pentagon report for the first time provides stunning affirmation that:

    "US intelligence predicted the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS), but instead of clearly delineating the group as an enemy, the report envisions the terror group as a US strategic asset."

    Hoff, who is managing editor of Levant Report — an online publication run by Texas-based educators who have direct experience of the Middle East — points out that the DIA document "matter-of-factly" states that the rise of such an extremist Salafist political entity in the region offers a "tool for regime change in Syria."

    The DIA intelligence report shows, he said, that the rise of ISIS only became possible in the context of the Syrian insurgency — "there is no mention of US troop withdrawal from Iraq as a catalyst for Islamic State's rise, which is the contention of innumerable politicians and pundits." The report demonstrates that:

    "The establishment of a 'Salafist Principality' in Eastern Syria is 'exactly' what the external powers supporting the opposition want (identified as 'the West, Gulf Countries, and Turkey') in order to weaken the Assad government."

    The rise of a Salafist quasi-state entity that might expand into Iraq, and fracture that country, was therefore clearly foreseen by US intelligence as likely — but nevertheless strategically useful — blowback from the West's commitment to "isolating Syria."

    Complicity

    Critics of the US-led strategy in the region have repeatedly raised questions about the role of coalition allies in intentionally providing extensive support to Islamist terrorist groups in the drive to destabilize the Assad regime in Syria.

    The conventional wisdom is that the US government did not retain sufficient oversight on the funding to anti-Assad rebel groups, which was supposed to be monitored and vetted to ensure that only 'moderate' groups were supported.

    However, the newly declassified Pentagon report proves unambiguously that years before ISIS launched its concerted offensive against Iraq, the US intelligence community was fully aware that Islamist militants constituted the core of Syria's sectarian insurgency.

    Despite that, the Pentagon continued to support the Islamist insurgency, even while anticipating the probability that doing so would establish an extremist Salafi stronghold in Syria and Iraq.

    As Shoebridge told me, "The documents show that not only did the US government at the latest by August 2012 know the true extremist nature and likely outcome of Syria's rebellion" — namely, the emergence of ISIS — "but that this was considered an advantage for US foreign policy. This also suggests a decision to spend years in an effort to deliberately mislead the West's public, via a compliant media, into believing that Syria's rebellion was overwhelmingly 'moderate.'"

    Annie Machon, a former MI5 intelligence officer who blew the whistle in the 1990s on MI6 funding of al-Qaeda to assassinate Libya's former leader Colonel Gaddafi, similarly said of the revelations:

    "This is no surprise to me. Within individual countries there are always multiple intelligence agencies with competing agendas."
    She explained that MI6's Libya operation in 1996, which resulted in the deaths of innocent people, "happened at precisely the time when MI5 was setting up a new section to investigate al-Qaeda."

    This strategy was repeated on a grand scale in the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya, said Machon, where the CIA and MI6 were:

    "… supporting the very same Libyan groups, resulting in a failed state, mass murder, displacement and anarchy. So the idea that elements of the American military-security complex have enabled the development of ISIS after their failed attempt to get NATO to once again 'intervene' is part of an established pattern. And they remain indifferent to the sheer scale of human suffering that is unleashed as a result of such game-playing."

    Cont'd Below
    Last edited by Atypical; 05-29-2015 at 08:35 AM.

  6. Atypical is offline
    05-29-2015, 08:28 AM #266
    Starts at post 264.


    Cont'd

    Divide and rule

    Several US government officials have conceded that their closest allies in the anti-ISIS coalition were funding violent extremist Islamist groups that became integral to ISIS.

    US Vice President Joe Biden, for instance, admitted last year that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar and Turkey had funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Islamist rebels in Syria that metamorphosed into ISIS.

    But he did not admit what this internal Pentagon document demonstrates — that the entire covert strategy was sanctioned and supervised by the US, Britain, France, Israel and other Western powers.

    The strategy appears to fit a policy scenario identified by a recent US Army-commissioned RAND Corp report.

    The report, published four years before the DIA document, called for the US "to capitalise on the Shia-Sunni conflict by taking the side of the conservative Sunni regimes in a decisive fashion and working with them against all Shiite empowerment movements in the Muslim world."

    The US would need to contain "Iranian power and influence" in the Gulf by "shoring up the traditional Sunni regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Pakistan." Simultaneously, the US must maintain "a strong strategic relationship with the Iraqi Shiite government" despite its Iran alliance.

    The RAND report confirmed that the "divide and rule" strategy was already being deployed "to create divisions in the jihadist camp. Today in Iraq such a strategy is being used at the tactical level."

    The report observed that the US was forming "temporary alliances" with al-Qaeda affiliated "nationalist insurgent groups" that have fought the US for four years in the form of "weapons and cash." Although these nationalists "have cooperated with al-Qaeda against US forces," they are now being supported to exploit "the common threat that al-Qaeda now poses to both parties."

    The 2012 DIA document, however, further shows that while sponsoring purportedly former al-Qaeda insurgents in Iraq to counter al-Qaeda, Western governments were simultaneously arming al-Qaeda insurgents in Syria.

    The revelation from an internal US intelligence document that the very US-led coalition supposedly fighting 'Islamic State' today, knowingly created ISIS in the first place, raises troubling questions about recent government efforts to justify the expansion of state anti-terror powers.

    In the wake of the rise of ISIS, intrusive new measures to combat extremism including mass surveillance, the Orwellian 'prevent duty' and even plans to enable government censorship of broadcasters, are being pursued on both sides of the Atlantic, much of which disproportionately targets activists, journalists and ethnic minorities, especially Muslims.

    Yet the new Pentagon report reveals that, contrary to Western government claims, the primary cause of the threat comes from their own deeply misguided policies of secretly sponsoring Islamist terrorism for dubious geopolitical purposes.

    http://org2.salsalabs.com/dia/track....wvxvZMGBK5SSIg


    __________________________________________________ _

    Our meddling always creates blowback but you will seldom hear about it from the MSM. You have to read alternate, credible sources.

    Remember this essay the next time you hear someone like Lindsey Graham, or one of his colleagues say, we have to send troops there because they're going to come here and kill us.

    Be afraid...of us!
    Last edited by Atypical; 05-29-2015 at 08:40 AM.

  7. Atypical is offline
    06-21-2015, 06:13 PM #267
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfGMYdalClU

    _____________________________

    That sums it up quite well. It's depressing that so few care. Greed, dont'cha know.
    Last edited by Atypical; 06-21-2015 at 06:27 PM.

  8. Atypical is offline
    08-01-2015, 10:02 AM #268
    How Donald Trump Is Feeding Off the Death of the American Dream


    The fascinating and dangerous trick of Trump is that he offers an escape from responsibility.

    By David Masciotra/AlterNet July 29, 2015

    “The American dream is dead” and “the US is going to hell” do not make for inspirational campaign slogans. It is difficult to imagine either one decorating a vehicular bumper next to adhesive flags and yellow ribbons. Somehow through his sheer lunacy, paranoid xenophobia, and buffoonish and boorish antics, the Vaudevillian billionaire Donald Trump, against almost all predictions, has managed to detonate the boring Republican primary, and place among the wreckage the typically taboo and unutterable idea that America is a country in decline.

    Historically, Americans have preferred optimism, smiles, and forecasts of long days under clear skies in a perfect climate. Campaign strategists have often advised their candidates to avoid using the word “problems” in speeches and interviews. America does not have “problems,” they explain. It has “challenges.” When President Carter, who unlike Trump is not a maniac, but a man of great wisdom, suggested that American greed, isolation, and materialism ushered into the culture a “crisis of confidence,” the press, his Republican opponents, and many Democratic allies excoriated him. The public replaced him with a Hollywood B Actor who played his part with panache. America is better than the rest, he told the people. We have nothing to worry about. We aren’t really in our long, dark night of the soul. It is “morning in America.”

    In 2015, as Trump makes perfectly clear, America has sufficient worry and anxiety to lose a lifetime of sleep. “The bridges are falling apart. The roads are falling apart. The airports look like hell. Look, I come back from places like Qatar, Dubai, where everything is unbelievable. Then, we land at LaGuardia or Kennedy or LAX, and it’s Third World,” Trump recently told a visibly irritated Megyn Kelly. One doesn’t need to own golf courses all over the world to appreciate the accuracy of Trump’s indictment. In 2013, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave US infrastructure the grade of D+. The “cost of inaction is far greater than the cost of doing something,” the report warned. Further deterioration could result in “everyday things simply stopping to work in the way people expect.” The horror show of Hurricane Katrina demonstrated with bodies floating in the streets, and children living in the stench and squalor of the Superdome, that damaged and declining infrastructure is not only an aesthetic assault, but an attack on human life.

    “Don’t believe 5.6 percent,” Trump declared during his announcement as a candidate for the Presidency, “The real unemployment rate is 18 to 20 percent.” The steady dismantlement of the middle class, and the escalating war on the poor, makes the economic picture of America as bleak one of the closing art museums in Detroit. Many critics mocked Trump for “inflating” the “real unemployment rate,” acting as if he were a lying lunatic, inventing numbers on the spot. The Department of Labor, however, in a number rarely reported, places the unemployment and underemployment rate at 12.6 percent. The unemployment rate more than doubles, when evaluators take into account workers “marginally attached to the labor force,” meaning those whose lives are caught in the chaotic struggle of working a few hours a week at a miserly rate when they are in desperate need of full time jobs. As if the 12.6 figure was not already disturbing and alarming, many economists place the number higher by attempting to include the increasingly difficult to determine amount of Americans so discouraged by lack of employment options, they’ve stopped searching for work, and have vanished from the labor force. Peter Morici, an economics professor at the University of Maryland and award winning columnist for The Hill, estimates that the national unemployment rate is actually 18 percent. The Mercatus Center, an economic think tank at George Mason University, makes a slightly lower, but similar estimation.

    Quarreling over the exact number of unemployed or “marginally attached workers” in America will do little to ease the troubles or improve the lives of the “nickel and dimed” workers Barbara Ehrenreich brilliantly and bracingly studied in her book on the working poor. 25 million workers, according to Oxfam America, toil for, at least, 30 hours a week, and can barely pay the rent, keep the water running, and fill the refrigerator. Their lives are a daily struggle against the misery of privation, and they are one unfortunate incident – an accident, a child getting sick, a car breaking down – from slipping out of sight into the back alleys and basements of America’s underclass and underside.

    Even if Americans prefer the boosterism of having their leaders endlessly tell them they are perfect, at the levels most immediate and intuitive, many of them cannot deny that something is rotten in the state of America. As Howard Dean put it when he was in the middle of his campaign in 2004, “Not even Fox News can convince you that you have a job when you’re unemployed.” Young college graduates, buried in debt and unable to find placement in a career that enables them to pay down the debt, know there is something wrong, as do working parents who barely survive, counting the minutes in their Sisyphean climb from paycheck to paycheck. Senior citizens unable to even dream of retirement are equally incapable of living in denial. More and more Americans fear that Trump is correct when he proclaims, “the American dream is dead.”

    Walking down the street of a major American city, one can often feel a sense of spiritual defeat. Crowding those streets are people who, according to the American Sociological Association, report having fewer “close friends” with every survey, people who are increasingly isolated and alienated from any sense of community, and who take more anti-depressants than any other people in the world, and self-medicate with high rates of alcoholism, drug dependency, compulsive gambling.

    When Donald Trump, a billionaire in a culture that consistently and foolishly equates wealth with wisdom, describes the death of the American dream or compares the US to Third World nations, he alone on the Republican side speaks to the anxiety in the American spirit and the panic in the American heart. Many uninformed but intuitive Americans praise Trump for his forthrightness, and it is likely his refusal to act as if America is an Edenic paradise, that resonates with them. Americans have problems, and unlike Jeb Bush or Hillary Clinton, Trump is talking about those problems.

    Cont'd Below
    Last edited by Atypical; 08-01-2015 at 10:04 AM.

  9. Atypical is offline
    08-01-2015, 10:06 AM #269
    Cont'd From Above

    The fascinating and dangerous trick of Trump is that he offers an escape from responsibility. Americans, especially those conservatives who preach personal responsibility, are terrified of accepting responsibility for any American problem, and resist it like healthy people resist pneumonia infections. With cynical mastery of demagoguery, Trump tells frightened and disillusioned Americans exactly what they want to hear: None of it is their fault.

    Yes, the American middle class is barely existent. Yes, the American poor are barely alive. Yes, American culture is violent beyond comparison with massacres happening on almost a weekly basis. Yes, American institutions are dysfunctional and American cities are in decay. But none of it is America’s fault. It is all the fault of the Chinese, the Japanese, the OPEC nations, and most of all, the Mexicans who are “killing us in trade” and “killing us at the border.”

    The reasons that America’s economy and culture are disintegrating right before the eyes of anyone willing to remove the red, white, and blue blindfold are American greed, selfishness, corruption, and arrogance. Rather than learning from other nations, America demonizes or ignores them. Rather than learning from its own tragedies and traumas – the 9/11 attack, Hurricane Katrina, the financial collapse of 2008 – America doubles down on the sources of those nightmares: war and military aggression, neglect of infrastructure and abuse of the poor, neoliberal deregulation and financialization of the economy. Given an opportunity for introspection, Americans will always look outward. The problem is never America. It is the Soviet Union. It is Islam. It is somebody or something else.

    Donald Trump might correctly identify many American diseases, but he offers no real prescription for healing. In the words of conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer, “he has no ideas, only barstool eruptions.” Trump’s campaign amounts to nothing more than xenophobia. China, Japan, OPEC, and Mexico are responsible for all of America’s failures, and America is forever granted immunity for creating an economy that works only for people with bankrolls similar to Trump, and for creating a culture that produces massive amounts of loneliness and emptiness.

    It is easy to ridicule and belittle Trump, and the hatred he expresses towards immigrants makes him worthy of it. It is harder to believe that Trump will quickly go away, as many pundits predicted when he declared his candidacy. Trump, and the ugly lines he recites with skill, is right out of American central casting. There is always an appetite in America for someone who scapegoats foreigners as the fault of everything in our society, and there is never a shortage of xenophobia. Whether or not Trump, the chief clown in the clown car of the GOP, wins the Republican nomination, his appeal to the nativist impulse in America will ensure a long stay, should he want it, in American political discourse.


    When President Carter addressed the “fundamental threat to American democracy” and spoke honestly about his country’s problems, he demonstrated strong and courageous leadership by explaining that the “crisis of confidence” presents “two paths to choose.” One was a path of “truth seeking,” “common purpose,” and “true freedom” in the form of communal investment and involvement – a “spiritual restoration” rather than material fixation. The other path, “a certain route to failure,” was “fragmentation and self-interest” – “The mistaken idea of freedom as the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others.”

    America chose the route to failure, and has paid for it ever since. Only from the vantage point of a ditch is someone like Donald Trump able to look like a leader.

    http://act.alternet.org/go/63050?t=4...8.38018.PmoJ3-

  10. Atypical is offline
    11-24-2015, 06:09 PM #270
    Where Are We Headed And How Far Along Are We?

    The recent terrorism in France, Lebanon and Africa adds anger and fear to what many already feel. The Syrian civil war and the resultant refugee problems are another festering sore creating apprehension, not all of it mistaken.

    The hate machine and politicians in this country are currently using these occurrences to stoke emotions to create more fear for political gain. It's what they always do.

    There is much evidence from the past as to the possible direction this can push us. We can already see it with what many call the visible police state, corporate control of media, excessive nationalism, and the many scapegoats used to divide us.

    The following listing is not provided frivolously. We are well on the way.
    __________________________________________

    The 14 characteristics of fascism are:

    Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
    Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
    Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
    Supremacy of the Military
    Rampant Sexism
    Controlled Mass Media
    Obsession with National Security
    Religion and Government are Intertwined
    Corporate Power is Protected
    Labor Power is Suppressed
    Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
    Obsession with Crime and Punishment
    Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
    and finally,
    Fraudulent Elections

    Political scientist Dr. Lawrence Britt recently wrote an article about fascism ("Fascism Anyone?," Free Inquiry, Spring 2003, page 20).

    Studying the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia), and Pinochet (Chile), Dr. Britt found they all had 14 elements in common. He calls these the identifying characteristics of fascism.

    Powerful and Continuing Nationalism

    Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottoes, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.




    Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights

    Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.




    Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause

    The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.




    Supremacy of the Military

    Even when there are widespread domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.




    Rampant Sexism

    The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Opposition to abortion is high, as is homophobia and anti-gay legislation and national policy.




    Controlled Mass Media

    Sometimes the media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.




    Obsession with National Security

    Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

    


Religion and Government are Intertwined

    Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.




    Corporate Power is Protected

    The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.




    Labor Power is Suppressed

    Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed .




    Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts

    Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts is openly attacked, and governments often refuse to fund the arts.




    Obsession with Crime and Punishment

    Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.




    Rampant Cronyism and Corruption

    Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.




    Fraudulent Elections

    Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.



    Last edited by Atypical; 11-24-2015 at 06:21 PM.