Master Negotiator Obama Tries To Bluff Karzai

Ace poker player Barack Obama (the man who gets fleeced almost every time he has to negotiate with American politicians) made a ploy to bluff Hamid Karzai, the wily Con-Man-In-Chief of Afghanistan. Obama had one or more of his minions plant in the press the notion that Obama may leave no U.S. troops in Afghanistan at all after 2014 (the "withdrawal" date for U.S. forces) if Karzai doesn't soften his negotiating position.

Naturally, Karzai wasn't fazed. This is a man who's spent much of his life in the cutthroat environs of Afghan society. Obama is a man with a record of caving in and making hollow veto threats. The idea that Karzai would be snookered for one second by Obama's bluff is laughable, and pathetic. Obama is like a tourist in the casbah, haggling with a bazaar merchant over some trinket. He thinks he's getting a good price but the merchant has played him for a sap.

Obama's well out of his depth dealing with the likes of Karzai. Karzai has gotten away with running a gigantic scam on the U.S. for over a decade, and calling it a "government." The truth is, the U.S. doesn't dare let its Afghan client-crooks fall. The Democrats don't want to face GOP screams of "WHO LOST AFGHANISTAN?" (That crap started with "who lost China?" in 1949. Most recently we had a mini-example of it in "Who lost Ambassador Stephens?" in Libya.) The Wall Street Journal is already doing it on today's editorial page!

 At issue is immunity for U.S. troops to commit war crimes. That was the sticking point in Iraq, which prompted Obama to pull out the U.S. troops there. Obviously it's intolerable that U.S. troops not have license to commit crimes where they're stationed, since it is their habitual behavior to commit them. (See Okinawa, for example.) And in Iraq, the U.S. military blessed those crimes, even the most notorious ones, like the Ramadi massacre by U.S. Marines storming homes at night and slaughtering the residents because they'd hit a mine.  (That's a tactic the Nazis used in World War II, slaughtering civilians in retaliation for attacks by underground guerrillas.) The Marine Corps exonerated the murderers in that one. Or the helicopter slaughter by chuckling U.S. flying butchers in Baghdad, who killed Reuters journalists and snickered cynically over the children they shot in a van that stopped to offer aid to the victims. (A double war crime.) The upshot of that is Bradley Manning is being prosecuted and will be sentenced to life in prison for leaking the video evidence of the war crime to WikiLeaks. This "aids the enemy." That's true. When the world gets informed of U.S. atrocities, it does provide grist for enemies' propaganda mills. Hence the war against truth by the U.S. government. (Note to Idiots who support Obama: this vileness is what you back, and what you rabidly demand that progressives vote for like sheep. Not me.)

The U.S. is also miffed that their Afghan "partners" apparently intend to free the various Afghan prisoners the U.S. is hoarding at the Bagram Air Force base prison. Maybe they should stuff them into Gitmo, if they're so valuable. Since Gitmo is down to 166 prisoners (86 "cleared for release"- yet the U.S. still won't release them!) from 750 or so, there must be plenty of spare cages there. Since they're never going to close it anyway. Not until "the war on terror" ends. And if "the war on drugs" is any guide, that means not for decades, or maybe until people wise up and overthrow this evil system.

Not that I'm a fan of Islamofascism. But an oppressive Imperialist power that has effectively rescinded 500 years of progress in human rights and thrown us back into pre-Magna Carta days is actually the more dangerous enemy. Al-Qaeda didn't strip 300 million Americans of rights, the U.S. government did. Al-Qaeda isn't "rendering" innocent people all over the world and torturing them, the U.S. and its lackey nations are. Al-Qaeda isn't spending trillions of dollars on an exorbitantly expensive military and secret police apparatus while sharpening the knives to slash spending for human needs, the U.S. is. So I submit to you that the U.S. government is much the greater enemy of the American people, even counting 2,800 deaths over a decade ago in an attention-getting act. (One facilitated by the FBI and CIA watching carefully and letting it proceed.)

The Newtown Massacre, and Political Agendas

The truly horrible Sandy Hill Elementary School massacre in Newtown, CT, is fast turning into a political vehicle for anti-gun forces, throwing the pro-gun crowd on the defensive.

A battle is being fought on the bodies 20 young children and 6 women school employees. (The media has put gunman Adam Lanza's mother, the first person he murdered, as she slept in their shared home, in a separate category as a less worthy victim.)

Immediately after the last “mass” shooting (just 2 killed actually) this time a genuinely mass one, on Friday, 12/14/12. Perhaps the media should stop inspiring these copycat massacres. We have seen this before, copycats attempting (or in this case, succeeding) in aping heavily-reported mass shootings.

The establishment media is really running the ball with this one. For five days running it's on the top of the front page of the NY Times, for example. Saturation coverage in multiple propaganda organs. Is it really that significant? Was the President of the United States assassinated? And the NYT has treated us to daily editorials demanding more gun control.

The BBC aped the U.S. media in obsessive coverage: “The story shaping the world,” was the intro to the broadcast 12/16. Later, as if giving an alibi for the saturation coverage, the announcer stated: “The shock value of this story has given it longevity.” Oh. [Apparently they weren't shocked when the 11-month old son of one of their own BBC employees, a Palestinian in Gaza, was killed in an Israeli air raid a few weeks ago. They waited days to give it more than cursory mention, and then dropped it. We could list many other examples of oddly “non shocking” atrocities that don't incite the BBC.]

And of course the media are pouring over scraps of info about the killer, a 20 year old named Adam Lanza, looking for clues and signs of weirdness. So far we have that he was a shy loner. (The media have treated us to a photo of him looking weird, eyes wide and unsmiling. Let us stipulate that he was “weird.”) The lack of many facts is no impediment to 24/7 repetitive “coverage.”

The direction the “debate” is going is to put anyone who's different under heightened scrutiny as a potential menace to society. Meanwhile it's obvious that the “liberal” segment of the U.S. media is gearing up for a push for tighter firearms and ammunition regulation.

So we'll have scapegoating of nonconformists and increased abuse and persecution of those perceived as different, as the likely result of mass shootings. How else to catch the Adam Lanza's of the world? He was not diagnosed as mentally ill (will any weirdness now constitute “mental illness”?) nor did he have a criminal record.

One obvious truth that the media can't seem to grasp is that people sometimes lose their minds. This is nothing new. People have been going mad for all of recorded history, and no doubt before that. The attitude that this is unusual is totally unrealistic, a denial of a longstanding truth.

And of course, in this case, the killer didn't even own guns. His mother did. Her guns were used to slay her and the 26 others. So what gun purchase restriction could have prevented this?

And even if assault weapons and large magazines are banned, no one would dare try to confiscate the millions of them already in private hands. Seems that the horse left the barn a long time ago.

But I do believe tightening controls could help. This time it looks like things might be different from the other mass shootings that got major attention.

One thing the “responsible” gun owners beloved of NRA propagandists need to be made to understand is that anyone can lose their minds. Including any of them. Just as anyone who is healthy can suddenly become physically ill. Mental illness is no different. It also strikes unpredictably at times. Not everyone who succumbs has a history of mental problems, no more than only people who are sickly get sick. It is not “the other.” It is one of us.

The reactionary propaganda orchestra is repeating the organized and orchestrated line they put out after the Representative Giffords massacre in Arizona: “this is not the time to discuss” gun control. So when is? After the story is old and people have “moved on”? Cynical bastards know that right after one of these shocking outrages is the ONLY time gun control would have any chance at all.

So for example immediately the Wall Street Journal editorial page swung into action, saying “There is time enough for that public debate and all the usual intellectual tensions put in motion by such discussions. But not at this moment.” (In the print edition the day after the massacre, referring not just to gun control but to treatment of and “protections from” mentally ill people, 12/15/12.)) And Murdoch's minions of course got the memo. On Fox “News,” one of the reliable resident reactionaries there, Neil Cavuto, a stablemember of the malign menagerie assembled by arch villain Roger Ailes, cut off Rudolph “Rudy” Giuliani (“America's Mayor!” the “9/11 Hero” himself!) when Giuliani started to make a peep about gun laws. “Now is not the time” Cavuto intoned. Giuliani obediently fell into line.

I do find the obsessive media-orchestrated national grieving somewhat unseemly, Just a few days after the Newtown massacre, ten Afghan girls aged 9 to 13 will killed in an explosion in Nangarhar province. That's just a filler item in the establishment media. (Go to Aljazeera for real coverage.) Like a storm in some distant land.

And the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has counted over 200 children killed in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen by the CIA and Joint Special Operating Command. That's ten times the number the U.S. And some foreign media are carrying on about endlessly who were killed in Newtown, CT. Ten darker skinned children for each Sandy Hill Elementary victim.

There are numerous atrocities by the U.S. military in Iraq, for example, that went unpunished. In Fallujah, for starters. It's too bad the U.S. media sweeps them under the rug, and the American people for the most part are willfully unaware of them, not to mention unmoved.

It's not that I put a higher or inferior value on any child. The U.S. media (and its accomplices like the BBC) are the ones doing that.

This is what we could call selective compassion.

To be sure, people always feel their own pain more acutely than others.

But why are the deaths of children we never knew, or the grief of their parents, who are strangers to us, something we “share”? It is a somewhat artificial empathy that is generated by having the tragedy shoved forcefully under our noses for days on end.

Whereas when scores of Palestinian children are killed by U.S. bombs dropped by U.S. Planes flown by Israeli pilots, that is like cockroaches being squashed. And no, that wasn't “self-defense” by Israel. Israel killed a 15 year old Palestinian boy. That prompted several days of rocket fire into Israel, which hit no one. Then the Palestinians declared a ceasefire. Two days later, the Israelis murdered the military commander of Hamas, who had been trying to negotiate with the Israelis! (No wonder the Israeli have “no one to negotiate with” and “no partner for peace.” They keep killing them. The Israelis don't want to have to agree to give up any territory- in fact they want more.) That in turn caused Hamas and the smaller, more radical groups to resume rocket fire, to which Israel responded with a bombing campaign and threats of invasion. The U.S. Media and other Western propaganda outlets (again, like the BBC) shameless obfuscated and flat out lied about it. NPR claimed, when the Israeli started their aerial bombing campaign, that it was in response to “four days of rocket fire” by the Palestinians, a flat lie. (If it wasn't a lie, than NPR is just a really incompetent, shitty news outfit.)

Then we come to Obama. Obama's contributions to gun control so far: he signed a law allowing concealed guns in national parks. And his DO”J” shelved rules that would have made background checks more effective. (Pure politician that he is, he would never do anything that could jeopardize his reelection.) And despite a 2008 law calling on federal agencies to share information about possible mental illness with the FBI database, it hasn't happened. The VA forwards data about benefit checks going to a trustee due to mental incompetence of the recipient. The Republicans, malign and destructive as always, are working to kill even that. They've introduced a bill called the “Veterans Second Amendment Protection Act.” [“Justice Dept.Shelved Ideas to Improve Gun Background Checks,” NY Times,12/16/12, p 1.]

Recall also that Obama did exactly zero after the Gabrielle Giffords massacre on the gun control front. Not so much as trying to ban large ammo magazines. Obama hasn't even enforced the requirement that prohibited buyers' names get entered into the Federal database by the states. Since the Virginia Tech massacre of six years ago, eight states haven't submitted any names to the database. [But I notice the Federal government has no trouble labeling hundreds of thousands of people as “terrorists” and prohibiting them from flying, among other things.]

But political jellyfish that he is, Obama is floating with the media-created tide and talking vaguely about doing something. Who knows, maybe he'll actually try to. More likely, he'll issue his usual earnest exhortations while leaving it to Congress to actually lead. Which is absurd. 535 leaders? Leading is supposed to be his job.

Meanwhile, the pro-gun zealots are laying low. NBC's Meet the Press invited all 31 pro-gun senators to come on the show the Sunday following the Friday massacre, and not one was willing to show up, the cowards.

However, the National “Rifle” Association did break its silence on Tuesday, 12/18, saying it “is prepared to offer meaningful contributions to make sure this never happens again.” It called this anodyne generality “an important statement.”

An ill-timed Michigan state law allowing pistol packers to carry them concealed into schools (!) and other public places landed on GOP Gov. Rick Snyder's desk. (That's the same dog that just double-crossed the people of his state, after pretending to be against “Right To Work” legislation, he and the GOP state legislature rammed it through.) Snyder felt compelled to veto it. So the handgunners (who already have carry permits) will have to openly display their guns when in public or on school grounds, (I'm not making this up.)

On the other hand, the very principled Ohio Governor John Kasich, a Republican apparatchik who as a U.S. Congressman was a criminal supporter of the contra terrorists, the Salvadorean state terrorists, and Oliver North (the American Otto Skorzeny) announced his intention to sign state legislation easing restrictions on toting guns around. “I think as we move forward, whatever we do, we don't want to erode the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens,” said he. Of course, Lanza the Newtown killer, Holmes, the Aurora, CO mass murderer, the Virginia tech rampager, the twin teen terrors of Columbine High in Colorado, and many other vicious lunatics were also law-abiding- until they weren't. (Colorado actually weakened gun restrictions after Columbine. Go figure.)

Yes, the U.S. Is mad, in a way. Other nations react to mass shooting with strict gun laws. Not the U.S. I guess the U.S. really is “exceptional.”

Just not in a good way.

"The Horror, The Horror..."

So soon after the last multiple slaying by firearm that received national media coverage (and my post about it) a much worse lethal tragedy has occurred.

The slaughter of young children in the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, and 6 of their caretakers, is a terrible, heart-wrenching crime.

That said, there is more to understanding what is going on here then to merely mindlessly partake in the emotional sturm und drang that the media and government officials are leading the populace in, like manipulated sheep.

Not to be misunderstood, as a human being, I feel the awfulness of this event, and can well imagine the terrible pain being experienced by the parents of the 6 and 7 year olds who were gunned down by Adam Lanza, age 20 (when he killed himself as the police approached the school), who is being described as having developmental problems.

There is more to say about this than the endless handwringing and repetition of the same basic facts over and over by the media.

At the risk of being thought churlish, first the huge media coverage, day after day, strikes me as disproportionate. The President of the United States wasn't assassinated.

The crime occurred on Friday, December 14th. As of Monday, December 17, the media is still giving it saturation coverage. (Example: for three days running, the top of page one of the NY Times is dominated by the story, and several full pages inside are covering it.)

Another Day, Another Mass Shooting In America

This time, the usual white male asshole culprit did it in a mall in Oregon. Typically, he then offed himself in cowardly fashion to avoid being called to account for his viciousness. Apparently the tough guy can't handle opprobrium. He killed two, and wounded one. (Not counting himself.)

He was probably mad about gay marriage or marijuana smoking or something. These guys can't tolerate freedom for other people- they always feel freedom for others is oppressing themselves. Their “rebellion” is reactionary, not liberatory.

Instead of smearing the Post Office by calling it “going postal,” it should be called “going NRA.”

AND, with perfect timing, a three judge panel of the U.S. Appeals Court that covers Illinois (the Seventh Circuit, based in Chicago) ruled 3-2 that Illinois' ban on concealed guns is unconstitutional. The opinion, overturning a lower court ruling, was written by right wing judge Richard Posner, and cited the recent Supreme Court decision on gun rights and self-defense. The panel gave the state 180 days to write a new law legalizing weapons. But not to worry. As the NRA likes to point out in their celebrations of such decisions this is for law abiding gun owners. So once one of them goes on a mass shooting spree, he'll lose his gun rights.

Mass shootings in America are pretty much accepted as routine now. Here are some recent ones:

October: a guy who can't handle rejection murders his ex-wife in a suburb of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in a spa. For good measure he murders two other women. (Making a statement about his feelings towards women, I suppose. So he exercised his First and Second Amendment rights all in one action! Like Certs- it's a breath mint and a candy mint.) Then he killed himself. (That way, he doesn't have to say he's sorry.)

August: white supremacist kills six at Sikh temple, also in a suburb of Milwaukee. Police have to finish the rabid dog off.

And two weeks before that, the Mad Gunman of Aurora, Colorado, invaded that movie theater showing the latest junk Batman movie, killing 12 and wounding 60. He's in custody.

Ho-hum. So boring.

Remember when mass shootings were exciting? Like Jared Loughner's attempt to assassinate Representative Gabby Giffords? And that Virginia Tech killer- the bodies really piled up that time!

And who could ever forget the Crazy Columbine Kids of Colorado? (Actually most people probably have.)

I think I'll buy myself a bullet resistant vest. Like the latest killer wore. (Along with a white mask.) And like the Aurora Avenger wore.

Thousands of Syrians Must Die So Hundreds Of Westerners May Live (Maybe)

That's the (unstated but obvious) logic behind the reason given by U.S. Government officials via the media for why shoulder-fired anti-aircraft weapons cannot be provided to the Syrians rebelling against the horrible dictatorship of the Assad gang. These weapons may fall into the hands of "extremists." And then, maybe, used to try to shoot down an airliner. Which involves three hypotheticals: 1) jihadists get the weapons, somehow, 2) use them to shoot at airliners full of white people, and 3) manage to shoot down an airliner.

Thus, the hypothetical possibility of a few hundred Westerners getting killed is reason to consign thousands of Syrians to death due to the aerial bombardments and resulting military advantage of the Assad regime.

Recall that there is one known jihadist attempt to shoot down a "Western" airliner with such a weapon. It was fired at an El Al jet taking off in Africa. It missed.

Of course, the U.S. is a nation that slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki to spare its soldiers lives. So why not let more Syrians die to avoid any risk at all to a few hundred Westerners?

But now the rebels have obtained anti-aircraft weapons from Assad's captured arsenals, and are using them. So it's time for the hand wringing to begin about jihadists getting those weapons too!

Morsi Overreaches: Western Media Piles On: What He Should Have Done

The Western media has been beating up on Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi for a week or so now, ever since he trumped Mubarak's judiciary and chief prosecutor by assigning to himself the right to ignore the judges' decrees and free himself from their vetoes of his decisions. He announced that this was a temporary, 2-month measure until the Constitutional Assembly wrote a new constitution. He also fired Mubarak's prosecutor. (A long-overdue measure.)

The Western media has painted him as a dictator as a result. (Funny, they never complained about the dictator Mubarak for 30 years.) The real beef is that Morsi heads the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood is not considered reliable stooge material for Western imperialism.

Every day, Western media puts on Morsi's critics- but never his supporters. This includes "quality" media like NPR and BBC. Their bias and lack of balance is quite blatant. I'm not taking Morsi's side; I just think that if BBC, NPR, NY Times and their ilk are going to call themselves journalists, they should practice journalism, not state propaganda designed to advance the agendas of their respective governments. Might as well just be openly government propaganda.

The BBC night after night fills its airwaves with critics of Morsi and their on air hacks pile on, hour after hour.

NPR on 11/30 reported that the non-Muslim Brotherhood members of the Constitution-writing body were not present- ignoring that they volumtarily walked out.

On 12/1 NPR said they walked out "because they said their rights were violated." No explanation of what "rights" were "violated." Obviously they just don't like being a minority that is outvoted. But that's democracy, right?

"Democracy" to a Western imperialist means "who we want, wins." See Nicaragua, whose election results were rejected by the U.S. bloc until one produced a Sandinista defeat. Or Palestine, where the victory of Hamas is considered invalid. The U.S. even egged on the Palestinian "Authority" to start a civil war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which the P.A. lost. (Nowadays the media conveniently ignore the facts and claim Hamas "kicked out" the P.A. True, technically, but highly misleading.) Not that I'm pro-Hamas, mind you. As an atheist, I have no affinity for religious zealots of any stripe. (Including Christian and Jewish ones too.)

Morsi should have simply called the regular assembly back into session- the elected parliament that Mubarak's judges disbanded. And called the Mubarak judiciary's bluff on that.

Yet Another Nail In The Coffin Of The Case For Obama

For any honest progressive, the shrill, desperate, even hysterical arguments for voting for the Democrats get thinner and thinner with each Democratic regime. Yes, the GOP seems intent on turning itself into a quasi-fascist party. But on almost no issue are the Dems materially better.

Certainly on human rights, the Democratic Party has been an abomination going back to Woodrow Wilson. Massive repression of progressives has been the rule.

Anyway, here's the latest example of the kindness and compassion of the Democrats, courtesy of NPR news (11/21/12 -2pm EST):

Obama is on track to pardoning the FEWEST prisoners since- get this- John Adams. (The second President, after Washington.) He's granted ONE WHOLE PARDON for every 290 beseechments.

Compare that to his predecessor, Bush the Younger. Bush granted mercy to one in every 55 requests.

Yeah, there's a whole lot of Hope for Change under Obama. Oh wait, there has been change. They've "legalized" indefinite imprisonment without charges for American citizens, in military dungeons. Just like in a military dictatorship! (All they have to do is call you a name: "terrorist!")

And Obama has killed a few thousand people with drone strikes.

But not to worry. As his cold-blooded AG, Eric Holder, Jr., says, "due process isn't judicial process." The killers decide someone is worthy of death. (Like the 16 year old son of Anwar al-Awlaki.) They discuss the matter among themselves. Then they decide whether to kill him. What could be more judicious?

Anyway, it was his own fault for having the wrong father. As Obama's senior campaign adviser Robert Gibbs explained after the murder, the boy "should have [had] a far more responsible father."

Recall, the son was killed two weeks after his father. There is no evidence- or even an assertion- that he was an Al-Qaeda member. ["Robert Gibbs Says Anwar al-Awlaki's Son, Killed By Drone Strike, Needs 'Far More Responsible Father'" - Huffingtonpost.]

One Member of Pussy Riot Freed; Tim deChristopher Still In Prison

One of the three members of Russian punk rock band Pussy Riot has had her sentence commuted to time served. Good news, of course. The other two are still serving two year sentences for playing an anti-Putin song in a Russian Orthodox Cathedral, outraging the reactionary Church hierarchy. For their disorderly conduct, a fair punishment would have been a small fine.

Meanwhile, U.S. political prisoner Tim deChristopher continues to serve his two year sentence for daring to bid in a U.S. Interior Department oil lease auction. Instead of having security guards escort him from the auction, which he in no way disrupted, (nor did he threaten anyone, attack anyone, scream or shout or destroy or damage Government property), the Obama regime prosecuted him for Federal felonies.

Thanks to the power of Western media, which continues to follow every twist and turn of the Pussy Riot case, Pussy Riot has gotten international attention and support from various Big Name celebrities like Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Yoko Ono.

Tim deChristopher, as it always the case for U.S. dissidents being persecuted by the U.S., is ignored and marginalized. Even most of the allegedly progressive media devotes insufficient attention to such cases- cases which reveal the hollowness of U.S. propaganda noise about "freedom" and "human rights,"- and never draw the obvious contrast to foreign dissident cases.

Amnesty International is blind and deaf to U.S. dissidents and political prisoners.

Perhaps progressives themselves have too much ideological and psychological investment in the myth of U.S. "freedom" and "rights" to bring themselves to face reality and attack the U.S. and its "Western" stooge nations for their rank hypocrisy.

South Africa, and the Sad Degeneracy of Power.

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"- Lord Acton.

It's time to speak of  the disappointing and indeed, demoralizing degeneracy of the African National Congress. Enough time has passed with the ANC in power to pass judgment. It is now clear that their rule is a terrible betrayal of the impoverished black masses. The ANC is a gang of thieves allying themselves with the established big business and mining interests to line their own pockets.

For example, last month the police murdered 34 striking miners, then indicted 270 of the survivors for the murders of the 34 gunned down by the police! An outcry forced the government to back down after a few days. The establishment trade union, COSATU, is in bed with the government and miners. The so-called “Communist” party, apparently connected at the hip to the ANC, opposed the strikers. (Imagine that! “Communists” against workers! Where have we seen that before? The Soviet Union? “Red” China? Hmmmm.)

The miners were paid around $750 a month. The mine owners kept playing hardball, insisting on no deal until the strikers went back to work first. After the massacre, they agreed to a 22% wage increase (the miners had been demanding 100%). That ended that strike. Other strikes are ongoing at other mines.

The ANC has done virtually nothing to improve the lives of the black population. If anything, the masses of blacks live in worse squalor than ever. In all their years in power, the ANC has failed to provide even basic services to much of the population they rule. Instead they've made themselves partners with the preexisting upper class and shared in the spoils. If this was the deal Nelson Mandela arranged with the white supremacists, shame on him.

Today the BBC reported yet another horrific crime against the black population by the ANC. Poor black schoolchildren in Limpopo district have no textbooks because the local ANC overlords who control the “education” department apparently stole the money. There was a phony “bidding process,” in which 22 companies were disqualified, leaving only one, “EduSolutions,” standing. (Don't you love those bullshit faux can-do pseudo-progressive company names hustlers come up with?) They took millions of dollars, and delivered no books. Under their contract, the price was ten times the actual cost of just buying the books. (The old rigged-bid-cum-kickbacks trick. How unoriginal!) A civil servant who objected to the scheme was sacked. The ANC hacks running the show insist that nothing untoward happened. Now the central government is looking into $250 million in “unauthorized expenditures” disappeared to. (Obviously a lot of corruption.) Meanwhile classes are held outside on the ground for lack of facilities, sans textbooks. Thus are the lives of another generation stunted by the rulers.

The ANC! Building a Bright Future for the People of South Africa!

Jacob Zulu, the current ANC boss (and thus President) is a satyr and freak who thinks showering after sex prevents AIDS. His crackpot predecessor, Thabo Mbeki, was an HIV denier. These are the caliber of gentlemen who preside over this kleptocracy. I guess outside of Mandela and some others, the apartheid butchers and assassins managed to kill all the good leaders in the ANC.

To his discredit, Nelson Mandela has put loyalty to the ANC gang above principle, and as far as I've heard in foreign (non-South African) media, has maintained silence about the ANC's crimes against the people, malfeasance, and feckless, negligent misrule. It's a terribly disheartening legacy for the years of struggle and sacrifice, and turns the sacrifice of Mandela and so many others (many of whom are dead or maimed) to mud.

Unfortunately, one of the truest things ever said about revolutions is The Who song, “Won't Get Fooled Again.” (“Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”) The same in that a new gang of exploiters and oppressors takes over. And any idealists who don't get with the program get purged, as “counterrevolutionaries.” (How ironic that epithet!)

Another example: Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) and the execrable tyrant and head of another gang of thieves, the stone-cold thug Robert Mugabe. (The first thing he did after seizing power was to destroy the other black freedom fighting group, ZAPU. That was a tip-off to his nature, and what was to come. Like so many cynical “revolutionaries,” what he meant by “liberation” was “power for me!”)

Of course, virtually every African ex-colony is now ruled by tyrants and thieves. They despoil and exploit their lands in partnership with foreign corporations (including Chinese ones now) and brutalize their people for being in the way of this self-enrichment.

The challenge for humans who want the sorry state of civilization on this planet to evolve is to solve the conundrum of how power can be used for good, when those who are best at seizing power are the ruthless, selfish ones, the politicians, thugs, and mercenaries. The best I can come up with is “more democracy,” which means more political involvement by the masses of people directly in decisions that affect their lives. How to get people to fundamentally change their relationship to power in that way is the real hard problem. Most people do not want to be bothered. Plus they would have to create the structural mechanisms to exercise real power themselves. This would almost certainly involve overthrowing the existing power structures in most cases. And they would have to overcome their own deep psychology of authoritarianism, viewing the people in power as a child relates to parents, in a submissive, obedient way, deferring to them, and expecting to be taken care of. In that sense part of the problem is that many people on a deep level never grow up.

Another big problem is that the kind of humane people who want to make the world better for humans are at a real disadvantage because violence is so powerful a weapon. Forget all that gush about “the power of nonviolence.” It is almost never a match for violence. This gives the criminal classes and the thugs they employ a huge advantage, since normal humans have no stomach for violence. The only times nonviolence has trumped violence is when there were no longer a sufficient number of thugs willing to be sufficiently violent to suppress the large number of people willing to risk their safety and well-being by physically opposing a regime. This happened in India after World War Two, when the British could no longer muster an army large enough to suppress the Indian masses, and when the Shah of Iran was overthrown in 1979. In the last week of his rule, his army killed 10,000 Iranians, then couldn't do it anymore. The Shah fled to the bosom of his benefactor, the U.S., precipitating the so-called “Hostage Crisis.” Someone challenges U.S. Imperialism, and it's a “crisis.” Today in Indonesia 2 million people are simultaneously striking. That's what it takes, massive numbers. But that is hard to organize, especially when regimes systematically murder organizers, as in Colombia, where the murder of labor organizers continues unabated with the tacit approval of the Obama regime. The strategy of systematically exterminating anyone with a normal, pro-human social consciousness, who are labeled “communist” or “terrorist,” has occurred repeatedly in U.S.-backed neofascist states since World War Two as a method of preventing the possibility of social progress and economic change.

As long as the oppressors are willing to be violent, unless there is some other force impinging on them, they will continue to use it.

Some examples where other forces impinged on the masters of violence: In the case of the Vietnam war, the U.S. Army was virtually mutinying in the field, and there was a massive anti-war movement in the homeland. (Nixon was bitter about the fact that the anti-war movement inhibited him from using nuclear weapons on the Vietnamese.) In the case of apartheid, external economic sanctions made the white business elite say “uncle.” In the case of the civil rights movement in the U.S., the cold war ideological competition with the U.S.S.R. Put the U.S. In a embarrassing position of bloviating about freedom and rights and how oppressive “communism” is, while lurid brutality and atrocities by Southern “sheriffs” and redneck mobs against people just trying to ride buses, register to vote, go to school, or eat at lunch counters, was on blatant display for the world to see. (And of course not all American whites were committed to the extreme form of anti-black racism practiced in the Confederacy.) This ultimately forced yet another round of civil rights legislation to be passed. (The set of laws and even Constitutional Amendments following the Civil War being mostly moot points.) Yet, there has been real progress. On the other hand, the CIA, with the aid of the FBI and Memphis police, murdered Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, and the complicit power structure and establishment media are complicit to this day by their never-ending lies and coverup about that assassination.

Finally, another factor that can undermine oppressors is internal divisions among elites.

So in conclusion, The End.

Blind Israeli Army Bulldozer Driver Exonerated of Murder By Israeli Court

The blind Israeli Army driver of the specially-made Caterpillar bulldozer used to murder Rachel Corrie,

an American who thought her mere body would have moral force against a remorseless state (two states, actually, counting the U.S.) has been exonerated by an Israeli court in a futile civil suit pursued by Rachel's parents at great expense in their time and money (and emotional hope). Obviously a blind man couldn't be held responsible for running over someone who was right in front of him. Indeed, the judge went out of his way to blame Rachel for her own death. She was reckless, he officially opined, to put her body between an Israeli U.S.-supplied bulldozer and a Palestinian house.

And obviously the driver was blind, because that is the only plausible way he could have failed to see Rachel right in front of him, in broad daylight, moving around, in a bright safety vest, especially when he created a mound of earth with her on top of it so she was standing above the bulldozer's blade a few feet in front of his sightless eyeballs. But the Israeli state, and all its minions and accomplices, are sticking to their story. And for the U.S., one less pesky troublemaker for the FBI and CIA to have to spy on.

To Israel and the U.S., Palestinians are subhuman, and thus have no human rights. They are illegal squatters on “The Land of Israel,” given to “the Jews” by “God” thousands of years ago and theirs to own in perpetuity. U.S. Christian fanatics concur in this. Thus Palestinian humanoids are a pestilential infestation on the land.

Make no mistake, many Jews, here and in Israel, would like nothing better to physically exterminate these pests, if only it were politically viable. (I have personally heard them voice this desire, and for those who haven't, I recommend you check out the hate speech and literature of the more “radical” elements of the “settler” movement, the followers of Meir Kahane, the idolizers of the assassin of Yitzhak Rabin, those who pay homage at the grave of Baruch Goldstein,* the killer of Palestinian worshippers in their mosque, and so forth. Their attitude is barely concealed.

And those who have run the Jewish State from its inception have relied on murderous terrorism to drive out the Palestinians.

*Baruch Kopel Goldstein was an American-born Jewish doctor who slaughtered 29 Palestinian Muslim worshippers and wounded 125 in a 1994 massacre in the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, a city in the West Bank where thousands of Israeli troops are stationed to impose a colony of several hundred fanatical fundamentalist Jews amid thousands of Palestinians. The ultimate goal of those who Goldstein represented and who honor his legacy today is to make Hebron (and indeed all of “the Land of Israel from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea”) Palestinian-free.

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