Let’s be clear that I am not educated as well on this topic as I should be. As many Serbs state that the KLA was the response to the brutal force of the Serb regime that marginalized ethnic Kosovo from 1991 to the time of the bombings. I have Serb friends that disagree or agree with this view point. I simply do not know if Chomsky is correct on this. What I do know is that the west did nothing when an illegitimate government took office in Yugoslavia. The reason I put this example up is because I am asking for a course of no action in Iran from the west today. This is indirect contrast to what many Iranians want. I believe that by taking examples and studying our shared past and humanity we can all be mindful of the course of action a governments and politicians take. I know that I disagree with Chomsky in regards to the war crimes that Milosevic committed. Not only I would not want to have dinner with him but he did deserve the world court and it was a shame that he killed himself before being convicted of the atrocities in Bosnia and elsewhere in the region.
Category: USA
Categories
PRESIDENT OBAMA’S NOWRUZ MESSAGE
In this video, President Obama sends an important message to those celebrating the Persian holiday of Nowruz, and in particular to the people and government of Iran. While recognizing our continuing differences with the Iranian government, the President outlines his commitment to a more just and hopeful future for all Iranians. To everyone celebrating Nowruz around the world, may you have a peaceful and prosperous new year.
World renown linguist and public intellectual Noam Chomsky calls for the immediate release of Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal, who Iranian border guards detained while on a recreational hiking trip in Iraqi Kurdistan. He offers to testify to their good character and record of advocating for social and environmental justice. Shane and Josh have been unjustly detained since July 31, 2009. So far they have been treated as political collateral. They were told their case was political after just over one month. It is time they receive compassion and are allowed to return to their families.
One year after an earthquake devastated Haiti, much of the promised relief and reconstruction aid has not reached those most in need. In fact, the nation’s tragedy has served as an opportunity to further enrich corporate interests.The details of a recent lawsuit, as reported by Business Week, highlights the ways in which contractors – including some of the same players who profited from Hurricane Katrina-related reconstruction – have continued to use their political connections to gain profits from others’ suffering, receiving contacts worth tens of millions of dollars while the Haitian people receive pennies, at best. It also demonstrates ways in which charity and development efforts have mirrored and contributed to corporate abuses.Lewis Lucke, a 27-year veteran of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) was named US special coordinator for relief and reconstruction after the earthquake. He worked this job for a few months, then immediately moved to the private sector, where he could sell his contacts and connections to the highest bidder. He quickly got a $30,000-a-month (plus bonuses) contract with the Haiti Recovery Group (HRG).
HRG was founded by Ashbritt, Inc., a Florida-based contractor who had received acres of bad press for their post-Katrina contracting. Ashbritt’s partner in HRG is Gilbert Bigio, a wealthy Haitian businessman with close ties to the Israeli military. Bigio made a fortune during the corrupt Duvalier regime and was a supporter of the right-wing coup against Haitian President Aristide.
Although Lucke received $60,000 for two months work, he is suing because he says he is owed an additional $500,000 for the more than 20 million dollars in contracts he helped HRG obtain during that time.
As Corpwatch has reported, Ashbritt “has enjoyed meteoric growth since it won its first big debris removal subcontract from none other than Halliburton, to help clean up after Hurricane Andrew in 1992.” In 1999, the company also faced allegations of double billing for $765,000 from the Broward County, Florida, school board for cleanup done in the aftermath of Hurricane Wilma.
Ashbritt CEO Randal Perkins is a major donor to Republican causes and hired Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour’s firm, as well as former US Army Corp of Engineers official Mike Parker, as lobbyists. As a reward for his political connections, Ashbritt won 900 million dollars in Post-Katrina contracts, helping them to become the poster child for political corruption in the world of disaster profiteering, even triggering a Congressional investigation focusing on their buying of influence. MSNBC reported in early 2006 that criticism of Ashbritt “can be heard in virtually every coastal community between Alabama and Texas.”
The contracts given to Bush cronies like Ashbritt resulted in local and minority-owned companies losing out on reconstruction work. As Multinational Monitor noted shortly after Katrina, “by turning the contracting process over to prime contractors like Ashbritt, the Corps and FEMA have effectively privatized the enforcement of Federal Acquisition Regulations and disaster relief laws such as the Stafford Act, which require contracting officials to prioritize local businesses and give 5 percent of contracts to minority-owned businesses. As a result … early reports suggest that over 90 percent of the $2 billion in initial contracts was awarded to companies based outside of the three primary affected states and that minority businesses received just 1.5 percent of the first $1.6 billion.”
Alex Dupuy, writing in The Washington Post, reported a similar pattern in Haiti, noting, “of the more than 1,500 US contracts doled out worth $267 million, only 20, worth $4.3 million, have gone to Haitian firms. The rest have gone to US firms, which almost exclusively use US suppliers. Although these foreign contractors employ Haitians, mostly on a cash-for-work basis, the bulk of the money and profits are reinvested in the United States.” The same article notes, “less than 10 percent of the $9 billion pledged by foreign donors has been delivered and not all of that money has been spent. Other than rebuilding the international airport and clearing the principal urban arteries of rubble, no major infrastructure rebuilding – roads, ports, housing, communications – has begun.”
The disaster profiteering exemplified by Ashbritt is not just the result of quick decision making in the midst of a crisis. These contracts are awarded as part of a corporate agenda that sees disaster as an opportunity and as a tool for furthering policies that would not be possible in other times. Naomi Klein exposed evidence that, within 24 hours of the earthquake, the influential, right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation was already laying plans to use the disaster as an attempt at further privatization of the country’s economy.
Relief and recovery efforts, led by the US military, have also brought a further militarization of relief and criminalization of survivors. Haiti and Katrina also served as staging grounds for increased involvement of mercenaries in reconstruction efforts. As one Blackwater mercenary told Scahill when he visited New Orleans in the days after Katrina, “This is a trend. You’re going to see a lot more guys like us in these situations.”
And it’s not just corporations who have been guilty of profiting from Haitian suffering. A recent report from the Disaster Accountability Project (DAP) describes a “significant lack of transparency in the disaster-relief/aid community,” and finds that many relief organizations have left donations for Haiti in their bank accounts, earning interest rather than helping the people of Haiti. DAP Director Ben Smilowitz notes, “the fact that nearly half of the donated dollars still sit in the bank accounts of relief and aid groups does not match the urgency of their own fundraising and marketing efforts and donors’ intentions, nor does it covey the urgency of the situation on the ground.”
Haitian poet and human rights lawyer Ezili Dantò has written, “Haiti’s poverty began with a US/Euro trade embargo after its independence, continued with the Independence Debt to France and ecclesiastical and financial colonialism. Moreover, in more recent times, the uses of US foreign aid, as administered through USAID in Haiti, basically serves to fuel conflicts and covertly promote US corporate interests to the detriment of democracy and Haitian health, liberty, sovereignty, social justice and political freedoms. USAID projects have been at the frontlines of orchestrating undemocratic behavior, bringing underdevelopment, coup d’etat, impunity of the Haitian Oligarchy, indefinite incarceration of dissenters and destroying Haiti’s food sovereignty essentially promoting famine.”
Since before the earthquake, Haiti has been a victim of many of those who have claimed they are there to help. Until we address this fundamental issue of corporate profiteering masquerading as aid and development, the nation will remain mired in poverty. And future disasters, wherever they occur, will lead to similar injustices.
Resources Mentioned in Article:
Business Week: “Ex-US official sues contractor in Haiti for fees”
CorpWatch report on Debris Removal
MSNBC report on Ashbritt
Multinational Monitor report on Crony Contracting
The Washington Post: “One year after the earthquake, foreign help is actually hurting Haiti”
Report from Disaster Accountability Project
Other Resources:
It is unbearable to watch, let alone experience, the latest tragedy that has struck Haiti. The religious evangelist and the host of The 700 Club Pat Robertson describes how these poor Haitians have made a pack with the devil for wanting independence from the French therefore god has now struck them with this tragedy. I adhere to a different view. That is I believe the devil has designated Pat Robertson as its spokesman.
It is heartwrenching to see the tragedy that has unfolded in this Caribbean country for the past several hundred years. Under the French Colonial rule, Haiti was subjected to the worst form of human exploitation possible. The same kind that the religious leaders practiced in the Untied States at the time. With the blessing of the Christian church leaders, a system of eradication, subjugation, slavery and exploitation of natives and Africans took place. The Haiti of today is the product of the religious establishments of the west that Pat Robertson and others adhere to.
The ideology of racism, intolerance, and lack of respect for all human life by the imperialists has created a country in despair-a country that does not have a single roof over its people and can not provide shelter, food, and safety for its citizens. Shame on the west and civilized world for letting a place like Haiti exist while spending trillions on unjust wars and corrupt financial institutions.
It is in places like Haiti that corruption, extremism and violence can breed. In another corner of the world you can see the impact of another religious extremism. Look at Afghanistan as an example. War and poverty in the past 50 years has produced a land where parents have no choice but to send children to ideological Islamic fundamentalism boarding schools for a loaf of bread. You can never fight the brainwashing when its done by the person that feeds you through a barrel of a gun. Or how Yemen, a country with over 50% of the population living in poverty, is the new breeding ground of terrorists and hate. Look at the conflict in Gaza and the West Bank. 60 years of occupation has produced economic despair and created the largest open-air prison in the world in the hand of Zionist extremists and Pat Robertsons. The tragedy that is taking place for half of the world’s population living on less then 2 dollars a day can not be resolved through military industrial complex, but through creation of sustainable nations with viable economies and governments.
No country or people can exist in a state of hopelessness and despair for long. If dictators can not be overthrown through nationalistic democratic movements then the population gravitates towards the next outlet, in most cases the religious institutions. Religious governments and institutions are more oppressive compared to the dictators that they replace. Look at the current religious government of Iran. Unfortunately, as we see in countries all across the globe, the price of installing friendly dictators may cost the West its national security, or at least its wealth through unjust wars.
It would be much more beneficial if our politicians and religious leaders conducted business through diplomacy and nation building rather than through war, conflict, and exploitation by religious institutions or the military industrial complex.
When I was a high school student in New York during the 1980s we used to say the following to others who behaved foolishly: Hey! Act your age, not your IQ! In other words, behave like a mature adult rather than an infant. Nearly 25 years later on I find myself wanting to say that to more and more people. Europe is suffering from a debilitating identity crisis. It doesn’t confront its issues rationally as mature and responsible adults. While North America doesn’t suffer from an identity crisis (apart from Canada’s permanent questioning of itself ), Western civilisation is in the process of de-evolution to infantile regression .
In 1996, the American poet Robert Bly wrote a book entitled “The Sibling Society “. In that book, he wrote that the United States and Americans were no longer adults. Rather, the society had regressed back to adolescence. He cited the partisan battles between then President Bill Clinton and the Republican leadership of Congress as case examples of an adolescent society. He said that American society had become conformist adolescence competitors and warned of the danger of fascism. Four years later, another middle aged adolescent by the name of George W. Bush was seated in the White House.
How quickly things degenerated over the past decade! The terror attacks on 9/11 caused further regression. The President and media reacted with infantile claims about terrorist hating our freedoms. The contagion spread across the ocean to the UK. Rather than acting like responsible adults, politicians acted like infants and expected the people to do the same.The movement of infantile regression crossed the English channel and infected continental Europe. From the Alps to Scandinavia, xenophobia, islamophobia and right wing violence is on the rise. Within the past decade, European countries have found themselves embroiled in hysteria and controversy regarding the role and place of immigrants, in particular Muslim immigrants within society. From the murder of Dutch filmmaker Van Gough on the streets of Amsterdam
by a Muslim angered by his films perceived to be anti-Muslim, to the debate about the hijab and burka in France , an atmosphere of fear and loathing permeates Europe.
Why this identity crisis now? Europe has not been the centre of the global system since the end of the Second World War. The United States has long eclipsed Europe as the leading economic and military global power. Europe lost most of its colonies during the 1960s. Yet, Europeans never felt an inferiority complex during the real decline of their power for 40 years after the war. Why now the sudden identity crisis about what makes a person French, German, Swiss and British? Why now the sudden nostalgia for a past which disappeared in the previous century? What happened to European rationality and soberness? Bly compared Europeans to Americans stating the former were by and large mature adults compared to the latter. That might have been so 15 years ago, but sadly Bly has been proven wrong.
In France , President Sarkozy owes his election by playing the race card and whipping up anti-Muslim fear. The Swiss Peoples Party won the largest number of seats in the last election with a campaign poster of white sheep kicking out black sheep. (See title image above) In Italy , Silvio Berlusconni swept to power promising to clear the streets ofGypsy people . The story repeats itself more or less the same in every country in the EU.
Opportunistic politicians are encouraged by tabloid newspapers out to sell copies. From Austria to the UK, the daily tabloids scream about the flood of asylum seekers swamping their countries. There are lurid reports how asylum seekers are simply economic migrants who simply make up stories about repression just in order to get a free flat and money from the state. Hardly a week passes without an columnist or editorial calling for more border controls or cracking down on the “high” number of illegal immigrants. There are calls for debates on national identity coupled with demands that immigrants integrate themselves better into the society. There are concerns that national cultures and languages are endangered of being extinct. The atmosphere is that of impending doom and the end of the world. I think someone needs to have their diapers changed.
On the other hand, religious fundamentalists fare no better. The death threats against artists who defame the Koran or Mohammad are also examples of infantile regression. Why not organise campaigns to boycott offensive works of art? Instead of making angry denunciations, why not educate the public about Islamic culture? Instead of holy wars and calls to arms, why not initiate sober and serious public discussions and forums. Are there any adults left? If so, please rise up!
The most pertinent question is why there aren’t any politicians or intellectuals making mature and rational debates or at least demanding a more sober debate? Why do election campaigns resemble more like adolescent popularity contests rather than serious and dignified debates advancing policies to the advantage of all. Why are so many middle aged media and political figures having temper tantrums in public? Why do people vote for political parties and politicians who treat them like little children offering them nothing substantial other than candy and sugar?
Europe has no reason for an identity crisis. The only region in Europe to have an excuse to have an identity crisis in the former Yugoslavia . Yet, despite the traumatic shock of civil war and a violent break up, most people living in the former Yugoslavia do not suffer from the same identity crisis as their better off neighbours. When Serbs endured 78 days of NATO bombing , they dusted themselves off and carried on with life. They didn’t react hysterically or degenerate into adolescents or infants. The NATO campaign was an attack much worse than what the U.S. endured for a few hours during one day. Neither immigrants nor the Americans are to blame for the woes of Europe. Europeans need to grow up. Americans must stop blaming “socialism” for their problems. If they are not satisfied with the political order, then they should agitate to create an alternative. If they are no happy with the European Union, then they should organise a movement to withdraw. On the other hand, they must accept the reality. Now only must they act like adults but they should demand to be treated as adults rather than fall for cheap gimmicks proffered by insincere politicians who scapegoat members of the community. There is no doubt that the West is in crisis. The crisis is internal rather than external. The crisis will only be solved by responsible adults. Otherwise the crisis will degenerate hand in hand with social infantile regression.
To: Palin-lovers, Fox “News,” the “mainstream” media, and the Far Right, et al.
From: William Rivers Pitt
Date: Monday 10 January 2011
Re: The blood on your hands
Dear “Patriots,”
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords isn’t much older than I am. She served in the Arizona State House of Representatives, and the Arizona State Senate, before being elected to three successive terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. She once described herself as a “former Republican,” and is today considered a “Blue Dog” Democrat, meaning she holds a number of conservative political positions. This is not terribly surprising, given the generally conservative political bent of the state she has served for the last ten years. She was married four years ago to a space shuttle commander who had served as a Naval aviator, and who flew 39 combat missions in Desert Storm, before volunteering for astronaut training.
Last Wednesday, she was sworn in to her third term as the Representative for Arizona’s 8th congressional district. One of her first acts in the newly-minted 112th Congress was to read aloud from the House floor, in response to the Republican Party’s recitation of the Constitution, the following lines: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
She returned to Arizona not long after to assist in the implementation of that most vital of Constitutional principles, calling together a meeting of her constituents in a peaceable assembly so the citizens she represents could petition the government for a redress of grievances. Among the gathered crowd were a number of her staffers, a judge, and a nine-year-old girl named Christina-Taylor Green who was born on September 11, 2001.
And then all Hell broke loose.
A man named Jared Lee Loughner waded into the group and fired a bullet into Rep. Giffords’ skull at point-blank range, before turning his weapon on others in the crowd. Christina-Taylor Greene, who would have celebrated her tenth birthday on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, was shot in the chest and killed. The woman who brought her to the event was also shot. Gabriel Zimmerman, who served as Rep. Giffords’ director of community outreach, was also killed. He was 30 years old, and was recently engaged to be married. U.S. District Judge John Roll, who had served on the bench for twenty years, was also killed. Dorwin Stoddard, a church volunteer, died after putting his body between his wife and the hail of bullets. His wife was also shot. Two of Rep. Giffords’ constituents, Dorothy Morris and Phyllis Scheck, were also killed. All in all, 31 shots were fired before several brave souls tackled Loughner, disarmed him, and wrestled him to the ground.
At the time of this writing, Rep. Giffords is lying in a hospital bed in critical condition. The God you Bible-spewing frauds love to flog the rest of us with must have been in that supermarket crowd with her on Saturday, with His hand on her shoulder, because it is nothing short of a full-fledged miracle she survived at all. Doctors are actually cautiously optimistic that she will survive, though the degree to which she will ultimately recover is still sorely in doubt. She can respond to simple commands, according to her doctors, and is marginally able to communicate. If she survives her wound, it is wretchedly certain her life will never, ever be the same.
I just thought you should know a few things about the people you helped into their graves and hospital beds this weekend.
Yes, you.
You false patriots who bring assault rifles to political rallies, you hack politicians and media personalities who lied through your stinking teeth about “death panels” and “Obama is coming for your guns” and “He isn’t a citizen” and “He’s a secret Muslim” and “Sharia Law is coming to America,” you who spread this bastard gospel and you who swallowed it whole, I am talking to you, because this was your doing just as surely as it was the doing of the deranged damned soul who pulled the trigger. The poison you injected into our culture is deeply culpable for this carnage.
You who worship Jesus at the top of your lungs (in defiance of Christ’s own teachings on the matter of worship, by the way) helped put several churchgoers into their graves and into the hospital. You who shriek about the sanctity of marriage helped cut down a man who was about to be married. You who crow with ceaseless abandon about military service and the nobility of our fighting forces helped to critically wound the wife of a Naval aviator who fought for you in a war. You who hold September 11 as your sword and shield helped put a little girl born on that day into the ground.
You helped. Yes, damn you, you helped.
The “mainstream” media is already working overtime playing up the “Disturbed loner” angle with all their might. There is no doubt, from the available evidence, of Mr. Loughner’s transformation into a disturbed individual. But here’s the funny part: all the crazy crap he spewed, about the gold standard (a favorite of Glenn Beck, the master of Fox “News” fearmongering…so he can sell his gold scam to suckers) and government mind control and everything else before going on his rampage, is straight out of the Right-Wing Insanity Handbook. His personal YouTube ramblings were a mishmash of right-wing anti-government nonsense…the kind that attracts sick minds like Loughner, the kind that only reinforces their paranoia, the kind that finally pushes them over the brink and into the frenzy of violence that took place on Saturday. The kind that the likes of you have been happily spreading by the day.
He did not act alone. You were right there with him. You helped.
I’m talking to you, “mainstream” media people, who created this atmosphere of desperate rage and total paranoia out of whole cloth because of your unstoppable adoration for spectacle, and ratings, and because the companies that own your sorry asses agree with the deranged cretins you helped make so famous and powerful. It was sickeningly amusing on Sunday to watch Wolf Blitzer bluster and bluff on CNN about how the media owns no responsibility for this disaster. It was like watching a ten-year-old try to explain how a lamp got broken while he was running through the living room, but no, it wasn’t him. It was, in reality, a pathetic display…but that is what you generally get whenever Wolf is on your screen.
“Mainstream” news personalities like David Gergen and John King bent over backwards warning people not to blame Sarah Palin and her ilk for this calamity. It was a sick man who did this, they said. Bollocks to that. I hate to break this to the “mainstream” media know-betters, but words matter. When people like Palin spray the airwaves with calls to violence and incantations of imminent doom, people like Loughner are listening, and prepared to act. The “mainstream” media lets it fly without any questions or rebuttal, because it’s good for ratings, and here we are. Words matter. Play Russian Roulette long enough, and someone inevitably winds up dead.
Remember the run-up to the Iraq invasion, and the subsequent occupation? “WMD everywhere, al Qaeda connections to 9/11, plastic sheeting and duct tape because we’re all gonna die!” was the central theme of the majority of your broadcast schedule for years…until it was all proven to be a lie. You helped the liars, you were the liars, but you knew that. You also got your spectacle, and the corporations that own you got paid a king’s ransom, so everyone was happy, except the dead.
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Tell me this is any different, I dare you. For the spectacle, the ratings and the pleasure of your owners, you ran names like “Sarah Palin” across the sky in lights, even after she should have faded into well-deserved obscurity, and helped this blister of right-wing rage fester until it finally burst. This was your show, and in perhaps the most wretched irony of all, I would bet all my worldly possessions that your ratings are through the roof right now. You got what you wanted. I hope you are pleased.
And yes, I’m talking to you, Sarah Palin, you unutterably disgusting fraud. You pulled it off your ridiculous website, but it’s out there: you put cross-hairs – literally, cross-hairs – on Rep. Giffords, you blithered about “reloading” instead of “retreating,” and you made this country more stupid and violent with every breath you took. Well, congratulations, you failure, you quitter, you inciter of mobs. You put the cross-hairs on her, and someone finally pulled the trigger. Run from it all you like, Lady MacBeth, but this blood will never be washed from your hands.
I’m talking to you, Sharron Angle, you walking punch-line, who talked about “Second Amendment remedies” being necessary if you didn’t get your way on health care reform during your failed Senate campaign.
I’m talking to you, Rush Limbaugh, and Sean Hannity, and Bill O’Reilly, and Michael Savage, and Ann Coulter, and Laura Ingraham, and to every other right-wing tripe-spewing blowhard blogger and Fox News broadcaster. I hope you are proud of yourselves, because this is the day you get to reap what you have been relentlessly sowing since you were forced to encompass the unmitigated outrage of a Black man winning the office of President of the United States.
That’s right, I said it. Anyone who thinks good old-fashioned American bigotry and racism are not the core motivation for a vast majority of these so-called “revolutionaries” should get their heads examined. You’ve heard of the “elephant in the middle of the room?” Well, this is the burning cross in the middle of the room, and no amount of spin will douse those flames.
I’m talking to you, Koch Brothers. Your money to create and spread this disease was well-spent; you now have one less Democrat in the House to worry about, at least for the foreseeable future. Congratulations, you un-American sacks of filth.
And I’m talking to each and every one of you who listened to these traitors and believed the nonsense they spewed at you for no other reason than to pick your pockets for campaign/organization contributions. I’m talking to you who wore your silly fatigues and carried your badly-spelled fact-deprived signs to protests with pistols on your hips and rifles on your shoulders. You who threw bricks through the windows of politicians you disagreed with. You who shot out the windows of Rep. Giffords’ office not even a year ago.
You worked very hard to create exactly this atmosphere in America, and now it has come to be. We have entered the age of the Wrath of Fools, and we now must again exist in an America where the word “assassination” has become all too relevant.
You helped this happen. You.
You know it. I know it. Have the guts to admit it, even if only to yourselves.
I know many Republicans and conservatives, and consider them to be dear friends. The single most influential person in my life (aside from my mother) was a rock-ribbed conservative Republican, and there is no person I respected more than him. I do not count these people, and those like them, among those whom I address here. They are as sickened and repulsed by you as I am.
This is not the end of the story, but is just the beginning. The good people of the United States of America, the true patriots, have finally seen you with your media-painted masks ripped off. They have seen what comes to pass when hate, venom, ignorance and violence goes unchecked and unanswered. You have been exposed, and the fact that it took such an unimaginably horrific act for that exposure to take place only increases the fierceness with which you will be answered. You will be repudiated, not with violence, but with the scorn and rejection you so richly deserve. Spin it as you will, scramble all you like. You are found out, and you have nowhere to hide.
Oh, P.S., if anyone reading this is operating under the delusion that the overheated right-wing rhetoric that went a long way towards almost getting Rep. Giffords killed, and had a strong hand in putting six people in the ground, is some sort of new Obama-era phenomenon, well…
“I tell people don’t kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus – living fossils – so we will never forget what these people stood for.”
– Rush Limbaugh, Denver Post, 12-29-95
“Get rid of the guy. Impeach him, censure him, assassinate him.”
– Rep. James Hansen (R-UT), talking about President Clinton
“We’re going to keep building the party until we’re hunting Democrats with dogs.”
– Senator Phil Gramm (R-TX), Mother Jones, 08-95
“My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building.”
– Ann Coulter, New York Observer, 08-26-02
“We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors.”
– Ann Coulter, at the Conservative Political Action Conference, 02-26-02
“Chelsea is a Clinton. She bears the taint; and though not prosecutable in law, in custom and nature the taint cannot be ignored. All the great despotisms of the past – I’m not arguing for despotism as a principle, but they sure knew how to deal with potential trouble – recognized that the families of objectionable citizens were a continuing threat. In Stalin’s penal code it was a crime to be the wife or child of an ‘enemy of the people.’ The Nazis used the same principle, which they called Sippenhaft, ‘clan liability.’ In Imperial China, enemies of the state were punished ‘to the ninth degree’: that is, everyone in the offender’s own generation would be killed and everyone related via four generations up, to the great-great-grandparents, and four generations down, to the great-great-grandchildren, would also be killed.”
– John Derbyshire, National Review, 02-15-01
“Two things made this country great: White men & Christianity. The degree these two have diminished is in direct proportion to the corruption and fall of the nation. Every problem that has arisen (sic) can be directly traced back to our departure from God’s Law and the disenfranchisement of White men.”
– State Rep. Don Davis (R-NC), emailed to every member of the North Carolina House and Senate, reported by the Fayetteville Observer, 08-22-01
I could go on, and on, and on, and on, but you get the gist.
Most Disrespectfully Yours,
William Rivers Pitt
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
William Rivers Pitt is a Truthout editor and columnist. He is also a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: “War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn’t Want You to Know” and “The Greatest Sedition Is Silence.” His newest book, “House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America’s Ravaged Reputation,” is now available from PoliPointPress.
As you know, prior to election in Iran, I wrote in our blog that I did not believe that anything good will come as a result of the current election. Looking at the Guardian Council’s decision of selecting Ahmadinejad for president, I would have preferred a one candidate election. Why put all these old revolutionaries who have profited from the Islamic regime on the stand to run for president, when at the end of the day the average Iranian has no say in the election? Unfortunately, absolute power corrupts absolutely under any regime. This is evident in today’s Iran more than ever. As the election debates took shape the week before the election, the profiteering of Muslim ex-revolutionaries became obvious. In the debates Mr. Ahmadenijad accused the reformers of systematic theft and looting of nations wealth by reform candidates and its supporters. I was surprised that why a sitting president that had this information for 4 years while being in office did nothing about it until election night. Why Aytolah Khamenai would give these men the right to run for election if they or the immediate family had done some of these looting. For the average Iranian it has been obvious for years that Rafsanjani and Karubi had enriched themselves with public wealth. Still for many this was an awakening to see beyond the mask of religion and billions that these folks have taken from the Iranian nation’s wealth. It is clear that ideologies are served for the masses while mass looting of country’s wealth has taken place over the past 30 years under these old guards.
For folks that are not familiar with the Iranian factions, let’s be clear that all these old men do not represent anything new. The two main characters in this battle are not Mousavi and Ahmadenajad, but Rafsanjani and Khomeini who are old guards of the revolution. Since they are old, they are no longer fighting for power for themselves. They are guarding the nepotistic ideals so that the sons and daughters of these revolutionaries can benefit from continued control over the government and its resources and maintain the nepotistic lines of governance.
Iran’s hope for theological democracy under Islam was put to rest under the previous leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khatami, the president of Iran prior to Ahmadinejad. Unfortunately because of the divisions within the reform movement at the time the reform movement was put to rest at the voter level. After the first four-year term of president Khatami, the same revolutionary guards insured that the reform in Iran politics does not happen. How did this happen? They simply banned sitting member of the parliament from running in subsequent terms. They became disenfranchised. These parliamentary elected officials no longer met the needs of the Islamic Republic ruling dictators Rafsanjani and Khomeini. They got forced out of politics.
In his second term, president Khatami used his executive power to open news papers and magazines, and soon hundreds of news papers flourished in Iran. With the selection of Ahmadinejad as president, these magazines and voices again became disenfranchised and were quickly shut down. Many reformers got barred from journalism. As I have stated in my book, the supreme leader and the clergy system in Iran controls who is allowed to run based on a selection of old revolutionaries and mullahs out of Qom. This is effectively a one party system.
As I was watching the election, I thought what must have been shocking to the viewers from the West was the absence of a forum for a challenger to regroup and be able to mobilize its base. Mr. Mousavi and his supporters could only go to the streets to voice their opposition towards the election in illegal rallies. No political party in the parliament was visible to voice a challenge, or unite and plan for the next election. By the design the government has placed an executive judicial and parliamentary system that is full of yes men, and that follows the orders of the regime. No other voice can be heard in Iran, and even if it could, it would be dealt with brute force.
This video shows how the current leaders 20 years ago supported each other and to the opposition of senior clergy at the time sidelined Aytollah Montazeri. Grand Aytollah Montazeri in Iran during the Iran-Iraq war was always expected in the 80’s to replace Aytollah Khamanei. Montazeri spent 5 years in jail himself. He was sidelined because he did not believe in Islamic republic that did not represent democratic ideals of the masses. He also protested against the wave of execution that the Islamic republic committed against the voice of opposition views in Iran.
Now as the same Guardian Council and mullahs have reclaimed power at the expense of the current generation of youth in Iran, the question is- Where does Iran reform movement go from this point?
The options are clear. First, the nepotistic revolutionary leaders will not give up the wealth that their families have made. They will not surrender the thrown or loose respect for the crimes of looting that their daddies did in the country. They will continue to fight each other as the losing party may end up hung or expelled from the country. The last real leader Iran had after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini was Grand Ayatollah Montazeri. In the 80s when I attended the Friday prayers with my parents and I remember the laud orchestrated chants that Ayatollah Montazeri was the hope of Iran. He had lost three kids as martyrs to establishing the regime and was the Ayatollah Khomeini’s exiled partner. He was quickly sidelined by Rafsanjani and Khamenei at the time, and after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini, he was no longer a figure in the Iranian government and was put under house arrest and silenced. Even though he was a great revolutionary responsible for carrying the torch since he believed in open government with each Iranian having a voice, he was sidelined for the strict conservatives to rule.
This was fine for the neoconservatives in the White House at the time since they wanted a fundamental religious government in Iran. Remember that it was during the Reagan years that the Iran-Contra scandal broke out and the CIA funded sales of guns to Iran by importing cocaine into the U.S. The Reagan’s neoconservatives even negotiated with the Islamic regime to keep the hostages for 444 days so that it would kill President Carter’s chance of reelection and they got conveniently released when Reagan took office.
The fact is that the neoconservatives and the religious conservative government in Iran are not after ideologies. They use ideologies for the masses only to mold the public opinion. As the end goal is power, no amount of power is sufficient for these folks. They are happy to change ideologies and viewpoints in order to reach the end goal. For the conservatives in the white house at the time the end goal is dominance over nation wealth.
Before the election the neoconservatives hoped that Iran would select Ahmadenijad. Why? Because it would create the next war for them to be engaged in and control a population rich in culture and resources to create more military bases and to have the next war to fund the military industrial complex that relies on its base of support. The neoconservatives like senator McCain do not have the interests of the people of Iran in mind. They are encouraging actions that would help Ahmadenijad. They are OK with the concept of Iranians killing Iranians indefinitely, just like they have been OK with funding both sides of the Iran-Iraq war. Additionally, it gives a reason to the hawks in Israel to buy more guns with the U.S. tax payer’s dollars and use them in Iran. That will draw the U.S. into a fight with Iran and send my fellow Iranians back to the dark ages, very similar to what happened in Iraq. Remember that in Iraq, after the first war, the same neoconservatives told the Shiite majority that they would support the uprising and at the end they sat by the sidelines while Iraq military crushed the Shiite majority in the south in the most brutal way possible. Besides the next war and a permanent military base in Iran they have no other agenda. With that base established, they can run heroin out of the golden triangle all the way to Afghanistan, Iran and Kurdistan to fund the next dictator for another war. Therefore the cycle of violence between nations continues and they all profit from it.
Iranian government has used this to its full advantage to clamp down on its own people. You see for the Iranian revolutionaries it is better if the Israel does attack the nuclear development infrastructure. The conservative government can again consolidate power by reminding of the great evils outside of Iran’s borders. By having Israil attack they can continue to use the military to suppress all opposition.
Civil disobedience is the path to Iran’s future:
In Iran the concept of civil disobedience to this regime must take hold. You cannot bring a change in government with setting buildings on fire or throwing rocks. At the end, this level of violence only hurts the Iranians. In this regard I refer to the Iranians in the Basij, the revolutionary guard and the student protesters who are all mostly under 30 years of age. These young men and women represent the next generation of great Iranian minds that will be lost in such protests. The sons of the elite that rule with an ironed fist will not be impacted as they have taken the wealth of the nation to offshore bank accounts. We will only lose the poor, the middle class and other valuable Iranians to street protest.
The leaders who can possibly lead the country out of this mess such as Khatami or Mousavi are sidelined and it erodes the base of support for them if this violence continues. Continuation of violence is not what these leaders are asking for. What course of action should the average Iranian take?
The one course is the logical path for the resistance to any oppressor and that is nonviolent civil disobedience and resistance. For this we should only look at how the French are able to shut down the government by taking on peaceful strikes. Recently the union of Iranian bus drivers went on strike. This form of disobedience is the best form of resistance against tyranny. If doctors, city employees, nurses, lawyers called national strikes it would bring the ruling regime to its knees. National strikes combined with the shouts of Allah Akbar on rooftops will force this government to change without the need for another stone being thrown or innocent protester being shot in a violent act. This form of unrest is the course for all Iranians.
The demand for these protests needs to be clear: to establish political parties in Iran, open access to media, and stop filtering of election candidates by the religious theocracy. Non of this can happen without having fair elections held in the country. If the Iranian Majles (parliament) members that are still have some alegince to the reform movement need to make the above issues and the fair elections its daily priority. See the latest video from the Iranian parliament.
In regards to the U.S. politics towards the region, I hope that President Obama continues with the current stand offish approach, as any sign of threat by the West will only be used to again consolidate power by the Islamic regime, commit mass genocide by purging the anti revolutionaries, and create the next wave of exile of war refugees in Iran. Of course this is the course that Israel would love to see since they would then be able to receive the green light to attack Iran. See the next video:
As I watched the Shell and Chevron clean energy commercials in between broadcasts of CNN and Fox on Iran, I wondered how the media will portray things in Iran over the next few months. I have been going through the latest videos on YouTube each night looking for new materials that I could post on our site. To my amazement hundreds of new videos appear each night on YouTube. When I look at these gruesome images, my heart melts and I am deeply saddened to see them. The fact is that many new posts are not new but recycled from previous days and cut over with music and revolutionary slogans in order to increase the passion of the youth of Iran to continue the street fights and protests. The LA Iranians that left as part of the old regime all want to portray the current government as more violent than the Shah so they can put Mr. Pahlavi to rule once again and repaint him as a less violent king than the religious conservatives.
The U.S. news coverage has been amazing in regards to this election with no coverage of Haiti or the Moroccan election that took place. They keep recirculation of Iran videos as new footage. Is this because the oil companies are now buying more advertisements on these media outlets since they would be the first to benefit from the next war? Are the advertisement sales department and the editor’s desk in cahoots to serve content that they can get large corporate sponsors for? I am sure that is the case. This is similar to the case of the war generals and analysts working for the media who remained on the U.S. government payroll. The media did not only look the other way but acted to pass the war propaganda to the masses on behalf of the government. Are they now getting extra advertisement dollars from the oil companies when they keep running the same footage of carnage again and again on TV? Or is it because of the heavy hand of the AIPAC Zionists and the religious conservatives with the help of the U.S. tax payers’ money that is funding these continues reruns of the violence in Iran. So I would expect that over the next few months as the public opinion is shaped by these broadcasters on how evil Iran is they hope to force President Obama to change course and give Israel permission to attack Iran.
In the above scenario, the Ahmadinejads are victorious since they can once again claim power and say- I told you so, this reform movement is from the expatriates and Israel so let’s all rally around the flag, country and god and defend the nation. Finally, millions of Iranian lives will be lost defending the country but to the benefit of the neoconservatives and the nepotistic kings and princes of the region.
While Iranians die to drum beats of another war, the military industrial complex benefits from selling guns, and the oil companies from looting the Iranian wealth. The sons of these current leaders will than take residence in friendly countries with the wealth that they looted from Iran.
Al Jazeera’s Jamal Elshayyal has been released by Israeli authorities following Monday’s deadly raid on the Mavi Marmara aid ship that was destined for Gaza.
Al Jazeera producer, who reported from the ship as Israel launched the raid, was on the top deck when the ship was attacked.
Here, he tells his account of what happened.
Considering an American was killed in open seas. US government provides military support for Israel and spend our tax dollars in protecting this terrorist regimes interest in the Middle East . Clearly this puts Israeli leaders in the same category as Bin Laden and the IDF in the same category as Al Qaeda.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange appeared Sunday night on 60 Minutes sharing his believes and vision behind his work, as well as his thoughts on the possibility of facing criminal charges in the US. The man behind the whistle-blowing website that released tens of thousands of secret U.S. military reports and diplomatic cables has been in the center of the media hurricane for the past few months causing controversy and criticism as well as being seen as a defender of free speech and freedom by his supporters worldwide.
Steve Kroft spent two days interviewing Assange at his Britain home, where he is in house arrest fighting extradition to Sweden for questioning in two sexual assault cases. In the exclusive 60 minutes interview, Assange discussed his relationship with sources, Wikileaks’ vulnerability to government shut down, as well as rumors about documents embarrassing to Bank of America that are yet to be released.
Before he was placed to house arrest, Assange was constantly on the move, changing his appearances as often as he would change cities and jumped borders in attempt to avoid being killed, arrested, or kidnapped. Even before publishing U.S. secrets, Assange’s work caused threatening statements from powerful people.
Being asked to talk about specific statements that he considered were threatening to him, Assange pointed out “The statements by the Vice President Biden saying, for instance that I was a high-tech terrorist. Sarah Palin calling to our organization to be dealt with like the Taliban, and be hunted down. There’s calls either for my assassination or the assassination of my staff or for us to be kidnapped and renditioned back to the United States to be executed.“
Assange said that the United States does not have the power to put an end on the releases on WikiLeaks website.
“The U.S. does not have the technology to take the site down. Just the way our technology is constructed, the way the Internet is constructed, it’s quite hard to stop things reappearing. We’ve had attacks on particular domain names. Little pieces of infrastructure — knocked out. But we now have some 2,000 fully independent in every way websites, where we’re publishing around the world. …It’s not possible to do.” Assange tells Steve Kroft.
During the interview, Kroft pointed out that Assange’s agenda is viewed by a part of the public as anti-American. Defending the vision behind WikiLeaks, Assange told to the interviewer “Our founding values are those of the U.S. revolution. They are those of people like Jefferson and Madison.“
He also stressed that the website has played within the United States’ rules, saying his organization is comparable to any other publisher and should be protected under the First Amendment.
“We operated just like any U.S. publisher operates … and there has been no precedent that I’m aware of, in the past 50 years, of prosecuting a publisher for espionage,” Assange said. “It is just not done. Those are the rules. You do not do it.“
