That’d be nice, if the 4th-Republic innovations were multilateral in nature, to tie the US in tighter with the civilized world.

Posted by: …—… | Nov 9 2008 13:54 utc | 4

For Peggie @#3

Posted by: Prez | Nov 9 2008 14:40 utc | 6

If BO decided to implement a national draft or, say for example, 3 months of compulsory ‘community work’ (incorporating military training) for persons aged 18-25, what would your opinion on this matter be?
(note that very basic research quickly confirms that this is not an unreasonable proposition and indeed that it may even be quite likely)

Posted by: Al | Nov 9 2008 15:31 utc | 8

Al, I would move my family to another country. I’ll be damned if I will offer my children up to partake in slaughter of any kind, let alone for the profit and greed of a few despicable sadists. Maybe Canada. Some scary times ahead for the U.S. Bushco years were just a warm-up, a prelude.

Posted by: Obamageddon | Nov 9 2008 16:32 utc | 10

Well, Canada might not take me (several DUIs and some minor possession charges from my youth), so I’d like to go to Europe. Only problem is the only foreign language I speak is Spanish. I can swear profusely in Russian, but that really wouldn’t get me far. No, I’m stuck here in the USSA, at least for the next four years or so.

Posted by: Jim T. | Nov 9 2008 17:25 utc | 12

i think this hasn’t surfaced in MoA… the whole article is quite informative

The labyrinth of gullies, the tunnels and mud-walled compounds; the thump of rockets and rattle of gunfire, the shouts and confusion
[…]
But this was not Afghanistan; these were not British troops. Instead, just across the border, it was Pakistani soldiers giving their lives in a fight against the Taleban.
[…]
Any doubts as to the gravity of the situation in Bajaur were quickly dispelled as The Times drove there. As we skirted the immediate aftermath of a suicide attack that killed nine people in the town of Mardan, our escort vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb.
[…]
Fighting began there in August and caught the military by surprise. A Frontier Corps unit of 150 men was sent to establish a post at Loesam, where a crossroads links routes in four directions. Within two hours they found themselves under attack and were soon surrounded by a Taleban force estimated to be more than 1,000 strong.
[…]
“The fight ahead will be different,” said Major Anwar Saeed, as he stepped over the rubble and looked toward the towering peaks beyond. “It’ll be tougher. Mountain warfare. We’ll change our tactics and the Taleban will change theirs.”
He paused for a second as a nearby tank engaged targets on the slopes. “In October 2001 we thought this would last just a few months. Now it’s a few years. Militarise an area and it’s easy to make a beast out of man – and so difficult to make a man out of a beast.”

Posted by: rudolf | Nov 9 2008 17:30 utc | 14

Besides, the government can’t be trusted. The Peace Corps that everyone points to is a good example- Used for spying in Bolivia recently and other CIA activities throughout its existence.
Precisely. Obama, the vaunted Humaitarian, would introduce such programs, corpses, as Malooga calls them, under the auspices of “the spirit of cooperation and commonwealth,” but the seeds will have been planted for compulsory service organizations to become much less benign, and quite the opposite, malicious, when the next wave of Fascism takes hold. The Brownshirts, if you will. The spirit in America is definitely there for another Brownshirt Movement, and guys like Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh would be more than willing to lead the effort.
The same holds true for those who have pushed for the removal of the separation of church and state. The predominant religion today may be Christianity, but will that always be the case? What if the predominant religion in 30-40 years was Islam, and Fundamentalists from that religion started instituting Sharia Law? What an ironic twist that would be, and quite plausible, IMHO.

Posted by: Obamageddon | Nov 9 2008 18:09 utc | 16

I kinna had to pinch myself when I heard the Danish Foreign Minister, Per Stig Moeller, y’day, engage in something close to realspeak when he said that we should not expect any major changes in American foreign policy with the new administration.
Furthermore, he said that the American military apparatus is so big that its inertia keeps it going in the same direction no matter what the administration is. Mr. Moeller said that the “change” with Obama will be willingness to engage in actual dialogue more than anything else.
(from memory, what I heard on the news y’day)

Posted by: Chuck Cliff | Nov 9 2008 18:39 utc | 18

All the skepticism about Obama is well-founded. However, if the recession is deep enough and long enough, social tensions could force the state to move in unexpected ways. There could be overt repression (“brownshirts”, Blackwater, etc), or there could be genuine social support programs (domestic service corps could be one of those.)
Although policy may be set by elites, politics has to respond, to some extent, to the population. Unfortunately, ours is split in two, and the Palin half is likely to go for authoritarian solutions. As someone said, dictatorship, when it arrives, is both imposed from the top, and sought from below.

Posted by: seneca | Nov 9 2008 18:43 utc | 20

Der National Service, yah! For der kinden. The children. The flag. The soil. The nation. The world. For glory!
What a great topic for a thread all it own. Eh, Bernhard?
National Service has always been a wet dream of the GOP. It is considered one of the primary ways of achieving a permanent Republican (or at least a conservative) majority, this raising up of a whole generation of bloody-minded American youth filled with dreams of eternal and ultimate honor, glory, service, duty, and all those other ways of disassociating yourself from your own humanity.
Of course, Obama speaks (and thinks) of it in terms of community service, foreign service, and envisions young Americans actually learning foreign languages, and meeting people of other cultures on their own turf. What? Yes, Harlem, too.
Obama thinks he can sell it to Americans as a nice thing for neighbors to do for one another. On that basis, he says, and to keep it fair, he would not permit exceptions for anyone at all. No college deferments, no 4-F status, no exception for wheelchairs, the works.
In America? Where money talks? Right. Sure.
Besides, there are such Constitutional, cultural and economic obstacles to a national draft. Oi!
Drafting people is slavery, and is forbidden to do to Americans. The only reason the Selective Service Act has not been ruled unconstitutional is that they wrote enough exceptions into it to let the college kids and conscientious objectors out of it. If they hadn’t, some Ivy League families would have footed the bill to push a challenge to it all the way to the Supreme Court.
A genuinely national, no exceptions draft such as Obama has floated will be stopped cold in the courts the moment it is voted into law. If the children of the top 5% of the wealthy class are going to be included, then no one is going anywhere. If they are excluded, then no one in the other 95% will put up with it. Stalemate.
FDR got away with it for civilian employment purposes only, and only because it involved your basic three meals a day. The draft has never worked as advertised. Look up the draft riots of the Civil War for starters. In WWII, about one in five drafted civilians never actually made it into uniform. There were myriad ways to get out, and the military was wise enough to let people who wanted out badly enough to harm themselves get the boogie out. Didn’t want slackers.
The Korean War had about one in five drafted civilians somehow find a way out. Jumping off the dresser onto a Coke bottle was the popular depiction. Canada, South America, and Europe were always popular alternatives.
Vietnam was even worse. Nobody wanted their kid over there. In fact, the military came to the same conclusion — the lasting lesson of Vietnam to the US military is Never Again Will We Fill Our Ranks With Draftees — the lazy bastards won’t fight, they shoot their LT’s and Captains in the back, and they like drugs and booze way more than is healthy. They don’t want to die for the flag, they just want to put in their time. They don’t give a shit about the service, so the career NCO’s and officers retire early in droves, and pretty soon the draftees are wearing stripes and bars and stars and oh sweet Jesus it gets real bad.
So the Pentagon went to an all-volunteer force of rejects, moral hazards, gangbangers, and multiple-felons scrounged from the trailer parks and urban slums of America. It isn’t working out a whole lot better because even all-American volunteers will tell you up front that they wouldn’t be behind a trigger overseas if they had a real trade back home. Or just one fair shot at Community College. Just that.
Plus there’s that whole PTSD, missing limbs, no medical care thing when they do drag your blown up carcass back to the States after seven or nine tours, in whatever shape your mind and messed up ass is in at that point.
But I digress.
National service will never be accepted by the majority of Americans, even under the most benign terms of sweetness and light, because it involves their own children. The implicit bargain of the failed American Dream is that we are special people, and we get to do what we please. There is no precedent for fencing us in at the very moment of our blooming into adult freedom, able to drink, vote, shoot Arabs, go to college, get a job, sign contracts, get an apartment, get a life, get some — what? —
you want to put me where? In a barracks where? For two years?
It just isn’t consumer friendly. It won’t fly except at the point of credible threats like permanent loss of Federal and State college loans, no government jobs or security clearance in the future, social stigmas, jail time, and whatever else can be put on “your permanent record” and used against whomever hates America so much they won’t surrender 2 of the 47 years they have until retirement as a gift to a country that won’t put them through college, or let them see a doctor or dentist when they need to.
It will never be embraced as some wonderful new way to transform our nation except by hard core Christianists, and the GOP. They’ve got a bright future in twisting young minds through regimented training.
Young minds have a brighter future anywhere else. And they know it, and they vote.

Posted by: Antifa | Nov 9 2008 19:50 utc | 22

You guys & gals, talk as if the financial meltdown is an aberration, or an anomaly, a mistake. Wild speculation, though it may be, but I suspect it is a methodical premeditated way to subjugate the citizens of the homeland(tm).
A psychological form of what Johan Galtung calls, Structural violence in which is described as the systematic ways in which a given regime [or set of regimes] prevents individuals from achieving their full potential.
Institutionalized racism and sexism, Class war and religio-authoritarian penal codes and medical apartheid are how they herd us like cattle. From health to bioethics from Monsanto to the FDA. Full spectrum dominance by the MIC, just as Chuck Cliff writes above.
Militaries through out the ages have used food as a weapon, as a weapon of statecraft to control populations and subdue resistance.
Surplus U.S. food supplies dry up. Along w/American Oil and gas reserves:
Oil and Gas – The Next Meltdown? the Peak Moment 130: Drawing parallels with the current financial meltdown, Matthew Simmons expresses his alarm about gasoline stocks being the lowest in several decades and refinery production down following recent hurricanes. He warns that if there were a run on the “energy bank” by everyone topping off their gasoline tanks, the U.S. would be out of fuel in three days, and grocery shelves largely emptied in a week. In an interview plus excerpts from his presentation at the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO-USA) conference on September 22, 2008, Matt highlights the risks and vulnerabilities in the finished oil products system, and answers questions from the audience.
The war is on us as well as abroad!

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 9 2008 20:29 utc | 24

I’d read and liked The Aquarian Conspiracy in the early 1980s, but became disillusioned with it and the author.
Damn, she was human? Who woulda thunk it..
Ideals are not static mistah charley, ph.d., she was an idealist, with all the attributes of a domesticated primate aka homo sapian.
She opened minds, and gave birth to a new world view, a way of seeing or at least a parallax view, however her flaws, and she influenced many wonderful author’s including some of my favorite. Robert Anton Wilson, said she was a warrior for imagination, unlike the religo-authoritarians of social control whom work cross in hand in glove with the MICFiC (as you describe) whom would colonize our empathetic Imagination, our beliefs, our very thoughts. A body, mind and spirit war.
What they want is conclusive system failure. Newton’s sleep. Ask Grover ‘drown the gov in the bathtub’ norquist. Diane Deprima, said, “the real war – and the only war that matters – is the war against the imagination.”
What we are witnessing is the enlightenment in reverse. Continued educational dumbing down, mechanistic science (need to know, military compartmentalization), war on systems holism and vibratory Science. Closed Systems verses perennial philosophy.
Re-meme-ber, they remember for us now. It’s a war for the imagination,a war for reality.
Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.
The real voyage of discovery consists of not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.~Marcel Proust

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 9 2008 21:39 utc | 26

@CC #25
Has anybody noticed this elsewhere in Westworld?
I not aware of that, CC, but have noticed markets and grocery stores have (dare I say it) compartmentalized, in that they no longer take responsibility for their products, in other words, pushing it off on the vendors of ___ product; With regards to sale items, supply and demand. With money tight and the economy in the shitter, I bought and apple the other day, and it had so much wax on it, it looks pristine on the outside, but rotten on the inside, kinda like our hollowed out civil infrastructure. Archer Daniels Midland co. is not your friend. I haven’t listened to it yet, but it looks like, The Fix Is In. Lets not forget also, Bush’s executive order against “hoarding food” and commandeering farms etc, etc…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 9 2008 22:01 utc | 28

Pathologies of Power:Health, Human Rights, and the New War on the Poor.

On Suffering and Structural Violence
Social and Economic Rights in the Global Era
This is a passionate book by a doctor who considers equity to be the primary challenge for the future of medicine and public health. For 20 years Paul Farmer has lived in two very different worlds, as Professor of Medical Anthropology at Harvard Medical School and in rural central Haiti as a physician to the poor, and he sees the health consequences of the widening gap between rich and poor. His long experience in Haiti is of particular interest now, and he’s the subject of a best-selling biography by Tracy Kidder. Farmer wants to see a new commitment to equitable distribution of the results of scientific research and the provision of medical care as a basic human right. He has visited Russia to assess the widespread tuberculosis in the prison system there, verified the high incidence of deaths in Chiapas due to such treatable diseases as tuberculosis and malaria, and examined Cuba’s successful approach to AIDS treatment. Through his organization Partners in Health, he works to assess the needs, find the resources for proper treatment, and train local health care workers to provide effective treatment for those suffering the growing incidence of TB, AIDS, malaria, and other treatable diseases widespread among the poor in countries around the world. The good news here is that there are affordable treatments for most of the health problems suffered by the poor. What Farmer urges is a global commitment to effective medical treatment for all at the most basic level of prevention and cure of treatable illness. A compelling book by an admirable, realistic, dedicated physician.

Paraphrasing one always pithy MOA whom say’s, “would you like a half turnip with your cabbage soup and an Haitian mud pie, commrade?”
Only 45, shopping Days till Christmas! Happy dollars store shopping!

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 9 2008 23:02 utc | 30

Was going to post this on the Obama Possible Change thread, but the author of this article adds a similar thought to Al’s post #27
Why I FEAR Obama like no other

Posted by: Rick | Nov 10 2008 2:25 utc | 32

Gota try and be fair and balanced when it comes to these types of things…

Posted by: Al | Nov 10 2008 3:00 utc | 34

I think it is fantastic for the US that a black man is president-elect. This doesn’t mean I have to agree with his policies or ideas.

Posted by: Al | Nov 10 2008 4:26 utc | 36

Didn’t mean to make light, but the hyperbole has gotten pretty thick around here lately. And no doubt that the internal defense branch has gotten way out of hand with their crazy assed gadgets and “contingency” planning. Except that there is also a history for all this, going back to Admiral Forrestal and the post war era. He was the one who apparently set the stage for the military industrial complex revolving door – himself being quite famous for his paranoid ravings that saw an enemy in every shadow. Its not hard to see how all this works when the retired military, teams up with industry and dreams up some worst case paranoid nightmare and drops it into some clueless legislators lap, “have you not thought about what could happen without this?” And “now, since you know, its your responsibility to do something about it”. And then in the end, everybody picks up a fat check at the end of the month. This has got to be whats become standard procedure, not to mention a huge percentage of the budget.
I do find it funny that throughout the 90’s, the militia movement black helicopter nuts did indeed fall silent when Bush came into office, and remained silent throughout a period that has come very close to realizing all their supposed suspicions and paranoia. And find it not so funny when members of the left take up those fears and try to pin them on the guy that just won a landslide election – running against all that fear.

Posted by: anna missed | Nov 10 2008 6:11 utc | 38

Polish MP Artur Gorski puts on the white sheet and hood and joins the lynch mob:
“Someone regarded by the (American) Republican right as a crypto-communist has become the leader of the world’s greatest power … and al Qaeda are rubbing their hands with glee that the new president wants peace, not war,” Artur Gorski of the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party told parliament last week.
“The black messiah of the new left has crushed the Republican candidate John McCain, and America will soon pay a high price for this quirk of democracy,” he added.
“Obama is an approaching catastrophe. This marks the end of white man’s civilisation,” he said in an address.

Posted by: anna missed | Nov 10 2008 7:01 utc | 40

Yeah. I’m sure I can find many examples of many different people from many different countries saying many differt, stupid things about politicians or other people from foreign countries. What is the point? This sudden wave of pretentious, righteous indignation manifest in people who now castigate others for being racist if they do not support BO, is not only vomit-worthy, but in and of itself racist. Do you think every African-American supports BO? Hmmm. Life sometimes cannot be simply distilled into either black or white, it seems.
Anna Missed, read the below article. If after doing so your still drunk on Kool-Aid…well, well then I guess there is no point in trying to reason with you.
“Conned Again” written by Paul Craig Roberts, November 9, 2008
If the change President-elect Obama has promised includes a halt to America’s wars of aggression and an end to the rip-off of taxpayers by powerful financial interests, what explains Obama’s choice of foreign and economic policy advisors? Indeed, Obama’s selection of Rahm Israel Emanuel as White House chief of staff is a signal that change ended with Obama’s election. The only thing different about the new administration will be the faces.
Rahm Israel Emanuel is a supporter of Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Emanuel rose to prominence in the Democratic Party as a result of his fundraising connections to AIPAC. A strong supporter of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee, he comes from a terrorist family. His father was a member of Irgun, a Jewish terrorist organization that used violence to drive the British and Palestinians out of Palestine in order to create the Jewish state. During the 1991 Gulf War, Rahm Israel Emanuel volunteered to serve in the Israel Defense Forces. He was a member of the Freddie Mac board of directors and received $231,655 in directors fees in 2001. According to Wikipedia, “during the time Emanuel spent on the board, Freddie Mac was plagued with scandals involving campaign contributions and accounting irregularities.”
In “Hail to the Chief of Staff,” Alexander Cockburn describes Emanuel as “a super-Likudnik hawk,” who as chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006 “made great efforts to knock out antiwar Democratic candidates.”
My despondent friends in the Israeli peace movement ask, “What is this man doing in Obama’s administration?”
Obama’s election was necessary as the only means Americans had to hold the Republicans accountable for their crimes against the Constitution and human rights, for their violations of US and international laws, for their lies and deceptions, and for their financial chicanery. As an editorial in Pravda put it, “Only Satan would have been worse than the Bush regime. Therefore it could be argued that the new administration in the USA could never be worse than the one which divorced the hearts and minds of Americans from their brothers in the international community, which appalled the rest of the world with shock and awe tactics that included concentration camps, torture, mass murder and utter disrespect for international law.”
But Obama’s advisers are drawn from the same gang of Washington thugs and Wall Street banksters as Bush’s. Richard Holbrooke, son of Russian and German Jews, was an assistant secretary of state and ambassador in the Clinton administration. He implemented the policy to enlarge NATO and to place the military alliance on Russia’s border in contravention of Reagan’s promise to Gorbachev. Holbrooke is also associated with the Clinton administration’s illegal bombing of Serbia, a war crime that killed civilians and Chinese diplomats. If not a neocon himself, Holbrooke is closely allied with them.
According to Wikipedia, Madeline Albright was born Marie Jana Korbelova in Prague to Jewish parents who had converted to Catholicism in order to escape persecution. She is the Clinton era secretary of state who told Leslie Stahl (60 Minutes) that the US policy of Iraq sanctions, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, had goals important enough to justify the children’s deaths. Albright’s infamous words: “we think the price is worth it.” Wikipedia reports that this immoralist served on the board of directors of the New York Stock Exchange at the time of Dick Grasso’s $187.5 million compensation scandal.
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
Dennis Ross has long associations with the Israeli-Palestinian “peace negotiations.” A member of his Clinton era team, Aaron David Miller, wrote that during 1999-2000 the US negotiating team led by Ross acted as Israel’s lawyer: “we had to run everything by Israel first.” This “stripped our policy of the independence and flexibility required for serious peacemaking. If we couldn’t put proposals on the table without checking with the Israelis first, and refused to push back when they said no, how effective could our mediation be?” According to Wikipedia, Ross is “chairman of a new Jerusalem-based think tank, the Jewish People Policy Planning Institute, funded and founded by the Jewish Agency.”
Clearly, this is not a group of advisors that is going to halt America’s wars against Israel’s enemies or force the Israeli government to accept the necessary conditions for a real peace in the Middle East.
Ralph Nader predicted as much. In his “Open Letter to Barack Obama (November 3, 2008), Nader pointed out to Obama that his “transformation from an articulate defender of Palestinian rights . . . to a dittoman for the hard-line AIPAC lobby” puts Obama at odds with “a majority of Jewish-Americans” and “64% of Israelis.” Nader quotes the Israeli writer and peace advocate Uri Avnery’s description of Obama’s appearance before AIPAC as an appearance that “broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning.” Nader damns Obama for his “utter lack of political courage [for] surrendering to demands of the hard-liners to prohibit former president Jimmy Carter from speaking at the Democratic National Convention.” Carter, who achieved the only meaningful peace agreement between Israel and the Arabs, has been demonized by the powerful AIPAC lobby for criticizing Israel’s policy of apartheid toward the Palestinians whose territory Israel forcibly occupies.
Obama’s economic team is just as bad. Its star is Robert Rubin, the bankster who was secretary of the treasury in the Clinton administration. Rubin has responsibility for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act and, thereby, responsibility for the current financial crisis. In his letter to Obama, Nader points out that Obama received unprecedented campaign contributions from corporate and Wall Street interests. “Never before has a Democratic nominee for President achieved this supremacy over his Republican counterpart.”
Obama’s victory speech was magnificent. The TV cameras scanning faces in the audience showed the hope and belief that propelled Obama into the presidency. But Obama cannot bring change to Washington. There is no one in the Washington crowd that he can appoint who is capable of bringing change. If Obama were to reach outside the usual crowd, anyone suspected of being a bringer of change could not get confirmed by the Senate. Powerful interest groups–AIPAC, the military-security complex, Wall Street–use their political influence to block unacceptable appointments.
As Alexander Cockburn put it in his column, “Obama, the first-rate Republican,” “never has the dead hand of the past had a ‘reform’ candidate so firmly by the windpipe.” Obama confirmed Cockburn’s verdict in his first press conference as president-elect. Disregarding the unanimous US National Intelligence Estimate, which concluded that Iran stopped working on nuclear weapons five years ago, and ignoring the continued certification by the International Atomic Energy Agency that none of the nuclear material for Iran’s civilian nuclear reactor has been diverted to weapons use, Obama sallied forth with the Israel Lobby’s propaganda and accused Iran of “development of a nuclear weapon” and vowing “to prevent that from happening.” http://news.antiwar.com/2008/11/07/obama-hits-out-at-iran-closemouthed-on-tactics/
The change that is coming to America has nothing to do with Obama. Change is coming from the financial crisis brought on by Wall Street greed and irresponsibility, from the eroding role of the US dollar as reserve currency, from countless mortgage foreclosures, from the offshoring of millions of America’s best jobs, from a deepening recession, from pillars of American manufacturing–Ford and GM–begging the government for taxpayers’ money to stay alive, and from budget and trade deficits that are too large to be closed by normal means.
Traditionally, the government relies on monetary and fiscal policy to lift the economy out of recession. But easy money is not working. Interest rates are already low and monetary growth is already high, yet unemployment is rising. The budget deficit is already huge–a world record–and the red ink is not stimulating the economy. Can even lower interest rates and even higher budget deficits help an economy that has moved offshore, leaving behind jobless consumers overburdened with debt?
How much more can the government borrow? America’s foreign creditors are asking this question. An official organ of the Chinese ruling party recently called for Asian and European countries to “banish the US dollar from their direct trade relations, relying only on their own currencies.”
“Why,” asks another Chinese publication, “should China help the US to issue debt without end in the belief that the national credit of the US can expand without limit?”
The world has tired of American hegemony and had its fill of American arrogance. America’s reputation is in tatters: the financial debacle, endless red ink, Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, rendition, torture, illegal wars based on lies and deception, disrespect for the sovereignty of other countries, war crimes, disregard for international law and the Geneva Conventions, the assault on habeas corpus and the separation of powers, a domestic police state, constant interference in the internal affairs of other countries, boundless hypocrisy.
The change that is coming is the end of American empire. The hegemon has run out of money and influence. Obama as “America’s First Black President” will lift hopes and, thus, allow the act to be carried on a little longer. But the New American Century is already over.

Posted by: Al | Nov 10 2008 7:20 utc | 42

I don’t know much about this man (I read wiki tho)
The men behind Barack Obama part 1

Posted by: vbo | Nov 10 2008 8:18 utc | 44

Uncle $cam,
I am very prepared to revise my opinion on Tarpley, and concede that he is not as intelligent as I once thought he was, and that his research is of a poor quality, and that his writings and discussions on radio are not to be taken seriously. I would actually appreciate greatly a 3rd perspective (him, you & I) on his work. In the past, when listening to him speak on radio, and after reading various essays he has written, I constructed him in my mind as someone who is, though by no means normal, quite insightful and learned, particularly in regards to early 20th century European history…Your opinion? Have I been fooled?

Posted by: Al | Nov 10 2008 8:48 utc | 46

Well Al, there may not be any point in trying to reason with me. Seeing how most of the “reasoning” going on is simply hypothetical musing on a 4 day old candidate elect with a notoriously vague change agenda in the first place, and no real record yet, Hey isn’t he suppose to be famous for that? Even so, I thought I made it clear on the other thread that my own interests here are with the peoples desire, and not so much with Obama the man’s ability to cash in on it. As far as I’m concerned Obama will rise or fall depending on how he interprets the peoples will and advocates policy for legislation accordingly, and I’m reserving judgment until he actually does so. For his sake I hope he has become well acquainted with both FDR and LBJ. Especially LBJ.
And Al, as you (probably don’t) know I’ve have developed a fine respect for Mr. Roberts over the years, and Mr. Cockburn as well, although I don’t agree with everything they say, particularly their apparent libertarian affinity. However, as usual Roberts makes the real point – in that the real change that Obama will have to deal with will be the (probably post Christmas) change wrought by the impending economic meltdown. And that pressure will either drive him into real leftist policy ala FDR initiatives or not.

Posted by: anna missed | Nov 10 2008 9:09 utc | 48

miriam

Posted by: annie | Nov 10 2008 10:21 utc | 50

Mandela’s tribute to Makeba
The text of Nelson Mandela’s statement paying tribute to South African singing legend Miriam Makeba, who has died aged 76:

The sudden passing of our beloved Miriam has saddened us and our nation.
For many decades, starting in the years before we went to prison, MaMiriam featured prominently in our lives and we enjoyed her moving performances at home.
Despite her tremendous sacrifice and the pain she felt to leave behind her beloved family and her country when she went into exile, she continued to make us proud as she used her worldwide fame to focus attention on the abomination of apartheid.
Her haunting melodies gave voice to the pain of exile and disclocation which she felt for 31 long years.
At the same time, her music inspired a powerful sense of hope in all of us.
Even after she returned home she continued to use her name to make a difference by mentoring musicians and supporting struggling young women.
One of her more recent projects was to highlight the plight of victims of land mines.
She was South Africa’s first lady of song and so richly deserved the title of Mama Afrika.
She was a mother to our struggle and to the young nation of ours. It was fitting that her last moments were spent on a stage, enriching the hearts and lives of others – and again in support of a good cause.

what a sad note to start the work week…

Posted by: b real | Nov 10 2008 15:19 utc | 52

Al, you listed a bunch of creds for Johan Galtung yesterday, but no links to his work. I’ll google him and see what I come up with.
I too feel like USA is losing its primo world position, and that this phenomenon is good rather than bad. Rome did it, London did it, and I don’t see a real downside.
But the details I am eager to see in Galtung’s work are more about the societal assumptions we all make that are fed to us from early childhood. So if you don’t like violence or consumerism for example, everybody else does so you stay quiet about it. Those are a couple of the obvious ones; what titilates me is all those other subtle traits and assumptions that are hard to notice as they feel like essential parts of normal life.
I’ve felt an increasing urge in the last few years (since 9/11) to draw myself up and out of the “normal” and try to observe language and behavior more critically. Because they are what we are being controlled by (if you’ll excuse that hint of paranoia). At the point where it became glaringly obvious that this “control” of humanity’s thinking could no longer be dismissed as OK, necessary, and even beneficial, but instead has a truly evil purpose, then it became necessary to learn how it is done and how to resist it.
This task got easier (and more urgent) when Cheney and his gang loosened up on their secrecy thing and began to be much more open about their objectives, assuming I suppose, that few would notice or care, that the media would keep us all in line.

Posted by: rapt | Nov 10 2008 17:08 utc | 54

Curious to see if Emanuel had any policy proposals, with an eye to energy, I saw his book: with Bruce Reed, “The Plan” 2006. I found the plan, as outlined in this short description, disquieting.
John Kerry’s national citizen service was one year (he withdrew it) and E&B propose 3 months. Kerry, if I recall right, left the internal security apparatus alone (I might be mistaken, certainly there was nothing startling) and E&B suggest “creating a new domestic counterterrorism force like Britain’s MI5.” The rhetoric on the War on Terror is, as Obama’s, very heavy-handed, and the addition of an unspecified no. of Marines and Special Forces, plus 100K troops is apparently imperative. Messianic imperialism!
Energy. Kerry was very concerned with oil dependence, but did not make the link with terrorism, or only rarely(?) (K’s energy policy was quite good, insofar as these things go – it was all over the board, included radical efficiency and conservation. Some called it ‘a hopeless muddle’ but that is all it could be..) We now have smack in the face that paying Arabs money for oil lets them spend it on terrorism! Obama himself often swerves close to stating this, implies it. The plan focusses on hybrids (Obama proposes 1 million plug-in hybrids.)
———————-
A little more on Beau Bama’s energy policy…
BO proposes taxation/redistrib. Evil corps. subject to windfall tax handed back in some form to the poor. JK kept to the narrow path – the user and the polluter pay, and his proposed measures would have been federal and applied the same way to all. Obama has admitted that prices of electricity would rise under him, at odds with his relief for poor families ideas. Kerry kept away from prices (he treated it as a different issue) and stressed conservation, weatherizing homes, and even mumbled about light bulbs.
Obama wishes to crack down on energy speculators. That is point no 2! The 3rd is – opening up the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to cut prices!
He supports cap n trade for green house gas emissions (point no 4) along internationalist lines. While burning FF and climate change are two sides of the same coin, this point is not strictly speaking central to a plain energy policy. (I see it as a sop to greens which has to be on the first page.) Besides that such schemes have been shown to be ineffective, another story. JK supported such measures as well but seemed to prefer regulation.
No. 5 is 5 million new green jobs. Plug-in hybrids are mentioned first. A Marshall plan for energy – but see the sums promised, lowish.
Rest (vets etc.) stress job creation….(see link.)
Extreme centrism, blatant populism (Palin came out in support of parts!), gleeful pandering under the new ‘social contract’ scheme (see Emanuel). With the possible exception of a national plan on ‘energy’ with ‘new’ investments (technological: renewables, re-tooling cars, hybrids, etc.) – which according to BO in the Michigan speech (see his web site) would amount to 15 billion a year. Basically, WE CAN!
With the exception of re-distribution to the poor and efforts to lower prices this policy resembles that of Bush more than JK’s.
Bush had his own green / energy independence roll, funding farms directly for production of green stuff – turning corn into ethanol, 7 billion subsidies in 2006. McC opposed ethanol – it may have cost him the election. BO: Look, I’ve been a strong ethanol supporter because Illinois … is a major corn producer. WaPo His *official* progr. now only mentions cellulosic ethanol. Obama may candidly state that Illinois farmers cash in but the ultimate beneficiaries are Cos. like Monsanto, the fertilizer industry, Big Oil, etc. He is now supporting ethanol strongly once more, proposing more funding: bloomberg and as the article points out, Colorado, Indiana, Iowa and Ohio went to BO.
This is abysmal, the pits. In a way, it doesn’t even pretend to be serious.
Obama/Biden energy PDF

Posted by: Tangerine | Nov 10 2008 17:53 utc | 56

If I were in the US now, I would seriously be stocking up on storable food for my family.
“Mikhail Khazin: U.S. will soon face second Great Depression” [http://kp.ru/daily/24189/396866/]
Who’s the author of this article?
“Mikhail Leonidovich Khazin was born in 1962. He studied mathematics at the Yaroslavl University and Moscow State University. In 1984-1991, he worked at the Soviet Academy of Sciences. In 1993-1994, he worked at the State Working Center of Economic Reforms. In 1995-1997, he was the head of the Credit Policy Department at the Economics Ministry. In 1997-1998, he was the deputy head of the Presidential Economics Department. In June 1998, he left state service. At the moment, he is president of the consulting firm, Neokon” [ha!]
Sure he’s a Russian from the Soviet era, so you have to factor that into account, however, many marginalised US economists are expressing similar sentiments [i.e. “Dow to hit 6,000 by February” – Harvard alumni –> http://redalert.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=144, along with other economists such as Peter Schiff and Max Keiser and of course Ron Paul]…Stock up on storable food, I suggest…even if such predictions do eventuate to be entirely inaccurate, when it comes to the health of your family, surely, it is better to be safe than sorry.

Posted by: Al | Nov 10 2008 18:59 utc | 58

Black helicopters alert…lol
Just stumbled on these youtube clips which is by far the best analysis of the forged aspects of the Zapruder footage that I’ve seen. Well worth watching
…if you’re into that sort of thing ;-p
The Zapruder Film-Including Never Before Seen Footage- JFK –
LBJ’s phone call to Parkland Hospital
More Prozac please!
“The question aint who killed JFK, but where are they now?”
Jello Biafra

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 10 2008 22:26 utc | 60

Let’s not forget that Obama was running against the fear in the recent election. I think it’s pretty funny to see detractors here assemble a barrage of characterization that has Obama morphing into a republican, and worse. I call your attention to news today that the bugbear Obama intends to move with all dispatch to close Guantanamo. It is further his intention to remove the prisoners from military custody and transfer them to the jurisdiction of US Courts, where normal judicial processes and protections will be available to them.
I think some of the hysteria on this thread borders on the sick.
We shouldn’t count our chickens before they hatch. We shouldn’t live out all our fear/fantasies, even though said fantasies vigorously stimulate some of the pleasure centers of the brain. Many really prefer an apocalypse and will no doubt go into severe and debilitating withdrawals, like a junkie going cold turkey, if Obama turns out to be a halfway decent human being.

Posted by: Copeland | Nov 11 2008 2:27 utc | 62

Let the circular firing squad continue

Posted by: anna missed | Nov 11 2008 4:31 utc | 64

secret order lets u.s. supply black market in wild animal trafficking 😉
garowe online: Coastal villagers report of helicopters hunting wildlife

GALKAYO, Somalia Nov 11 (Garowe Online) – Coastal villagers in Somalia are increasingly reporting incidents whereby naval forces from unknown foreign countries are actively hunting wildlife in the war-torn Horn of Africa country.
A traditional elder from a village in Mudug region, central Somalia, told the BBC Somali Service recently that local leaders are collecting evidence and eyewitness reports regarding the hunting allegations.
“Three helicopters landed three separate days,” said elder Mohamed Hussein Warsame, quoting witnesses and community leaders.
Soldiers jumped out of the helicopters and loaded live animals, including deer and ostriches, the he added. The helicopters then returned to a warship off the coast.
Mr. Warsame said the foreign soldiers used a technique to subdue the animals, some of which are extremely fast and agile.
He indicated that the identity of the warships remained unknown, but that locals have reported seeing the American flag hovering above one of the warships in the distance.

Posted by: b real | Nov 11 2008 5:01 utc | 66

Ah yes, the trusty old Red Scare. Venezula is evil and wants your babies.

Posted by: Al | Nov 11 2008 5:23 utc | 68

b real,
re: 66 – “EU approves pirate hunting mission to the Horn of Africa”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/somalia/2968588/EU-approves-pirate-hunting-mission-to-the-Horn-of-Africa.html
This is border-line insanity. What is this, 1869? Jeeez

Posted by: Al | Nov 11 2008 5:29 utc | 70

continuing on w/ some materials i linked in the previous OT on the ‘save darfurians’ efforts to put the pressure on obama & biden to intervene in sudan, this story is from monday’s sudan tribune, publishing out of france
Darfur activists pitch tents to influence Washington

November 10, 2008 (WASHINGTON) – Activists set up some 350 tents on the national mall in front of the United States Capitol building this weekend, hoping to reenergize the U.S. Darfur movement and influence the president-elect.
Each of the tents was sent by a community somewhere in the United States, representing approximately 350 cities in 48 states.
Organizers envisioned that the tents, painted by congregations, schools and groups from around the country, would raise awareness and funds to address the crisis in Darfur.
The tents will be shipped to Darfur for use as classrooms and as symbols of hope.
The one-year Tents of Hope campaign culminated this weekend as part of a series of events in which activists gathered in Washington.
As part of the events, about 450 students from around the country traveled to the capitol for leadership training in grassroots mobilization for genocide prevention, said a student activist representative.
About 160 of them arrived on Friday for a march on the national mall before they split up to rally at the Whitehouse and the offices of President-elect Obama.
…
The Darfur activists discussed their high expectations from the Obama administration.
The leaders of the movement cited benchmarks by which they will assess the effectiveness of the Obama administration several months from when he first takes office in January.
They expect the president-elect to prioritize the issue and hope that a figure of high stature will be tasked with handling Sudan policy.
…
Former U.S. Special Representative to Sudan Roger Winter said that he urged activists to widen their advocacy from Darfur to Sudan as a whole.
Winter praised the all-Sudan “peace surge” being advocated by Save Darfur, Genocide Intervention Network and Enough Project, but suggested he would like to see even more attention to a policy that places Darfur within a broader political context.
…
The broader approach to Sudan represents an uncomfortable leap for some activists, most of whom were energized primarily by the designation of Darfur as a genocide—elections, democracy promotion and even peace agreements simply do not have the same galvanizing effect.
…
But the tension between an all-Sudan focus and a Darfur focus was actually reconciled several months ago by the leadership of the three largest activist organizations, said one activist in Washington.
…
Winter noted, “Sudan can get much worse. Note that I did not say Darfur can get much worse; I said Sudan can get much worse.”

i posted a few links on roger winters & sudan a few weeks back here, one of which pointed out that winters is currently an advisor to GoSS, the govt of southern sudan, which is the reported recipient of illicit arms shipments, including that of the hijacked ro-ro, mv faina, still being held hostage off the coast of somalia by a somali volunteer coast guard.
winters also has a history — overt & allegedly covertly — of being around during some of the more violent wars in central & eastern africa, such as his role in the last civil war in the sudan, or supporting the rwandan patriotic front (RPF) up through its final invasion of rwanda in 1994
winters is not shy when it comes to accusing u.s. adversaries in africa of genocide in order to promote regime change

Posted by: b real | Nov 11 2008 5:49 utc | 72

Who’s funding Winters and, more generally, this Darfur / Sudan peace movement?
I think we’re about to see Africa get raped, unfortunately…Here’s hoping I’m wrong.

Posted by: Al | Nov 11 2008 6:00 utc | 74

Copeland: sick hysteria? why can’t it be informed criticism?
but you’re right about junkie withdrawal. many good, deeply invested people could suffer as they slowly realize the vessel they’ve poured all their hopes and dreams in is exactly what you refer to him as: a human being. and, as a human being, subject to all the many flaws and weaknesses we’ve been cursed with, like maybe the seduction of power for starters.
you speak of detractors unfairly characterizing BO, then refer to the array of clearly articulated opinions here as sick hysteria. my, my.
listen: for the next four years any criticism i express of the sitting president will be of his role as the executive authority of the scariest nation on earth; i do not question the fact he is a human being capable of bringing change (by changing the slew of stances he’s taken that won’t help anyone and will in fact continue killing innocent people) who loves his family and probably wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to them.
i think deep down many amerikans are severely ashamed of how we just stood back and took it for the last eight years, so obviously given the chance to save face on the world stage, the face (not the policies) that supposedly proves racism is receding in amerika and less war is on the way has been globally celebrated and consumer approved, making criticism of his verifiable actions as tricky as talking about zionists invoking the horrific victimization of the holocaust to blur their sanctioned appetite for atrocity against palestinians, thus neutralizing those pesky “detractors.”
it is a proven strategy.
of course there’s also the possibility, Copeland, that you are correct. maybe i am sick. in fact, the other day, i do recall thinking, during a definite wave of hysteria, that the cute narrative of finding the girls a puppy was some sort of weird message–that yes, the noble thing would be to save a “mutt” from a shelter, but due to his children’s allergies they will require a more specific breed in order to be a proper canine companion.
sorry, fellow detractors. i fear i have muddied your waters with the pollution of my hysteria. i should probably trade in my internal censor, because the one i’ve got appears defective.

Posted by: Lizard | Nov 11 2008 7:03 utc | 76

@Copeland:
BO’s qualities as a human being are irrelevant.
As Arthur Silber has pointed out numerous times, the office of the Presidency — Commander-in-Chief of the greatest, fastest collapsing, Empire in History — requires a level of pathological violence which no one here would countenance in a family member, and which instantly would land you in jail, or worse, if you were a member of the underclass and stole one billionth of what any President does, or were responsible for one billionth of the death, destruction, violence, and mayhem.
It requires misstating, or perpetrating non-existent threats, in Iran, Venezuela, Russia, Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia, Congo, Cuba, Bolivia, North Korea, and a dozen other places around the globe, as BO already has done, in the murderous interest of said Empire. It requires terrorizing and subduing populations of those countries so that ostensibly US-based corporations can appropriate the resources and wealth of those lands. It requires the use of CIA, special-ops, death squads, aerial bombing, remote bombing, drones and surveillance aircraft, spraying of toxic chemicals, radiological poisoning, killing of union leaders, economic suasion (starvation, destruction of critical infrastructure, destruction of drug manufactories, economic embargos, etc.), proxy wars, wars on drugs, wars with drugs, wars funded by drugs, humanitarian wars, concentration camps (1 1/2 M in Gaza), spying, data-mining, eavesdropping, propaganda, fear-mongering, threats, lying, duplicity, fear, subversion, etc. in pursuit of those goals.
It requires starving — and growing — the underclass of your own country so that the wealthiest, most pathological, most environmentally destructive, banksters can be rewarded with 700 Billion dollars — the single largest transfer of wealth upwards in the history of this country since the land grants the railroads received 140 years ago – a program BO is in favor of. It requires telling the lower and middle class of your country that there is no money for healthcare, social security, infrastructure, etc. while we spend over one trillion dollars (9% of GDP, 6th largest consumer of petroleum resources if it were its own country, which in effect it is) — more than the rest of the world combined — on offensive warfare. (Combined, warfare, its subsequent amelioration, and corporate profits, account for close to 25% of GDP — enough to wipe out all want and poverty in this and many other countries)
It requires support for the planet-destroying nuclear energy industry, for the use of DU weapons, for Uranium mining and radioactive tailings blowing in the glowering western winds, for the irradiation of our planet for hundreds of millions of years — which BO is in favor of.
It requires supporting the nefarious, deadly GMO conspiracy — ADM, Cargill, Monsanto, Con-Agra, Syngenta, etc. — which together with Buffett and Gates, seek to OWN and control the food supply of the entire world, regardless of the murder that causes, or the health and environmental effects of such a policy, and having already shamelessly and criminally contaminated mankind’s several heritage crops – corn, for one, while pushing peasants, through so-called “free-trade” agricultural export policies, into starvation, undercutting and destroying local producers in the name of corporate profits.
It requires support of a media system, educational system, and cultural industry — a vast propaganda apparatus dwarfing any the former Soviet Union ever had — which keeps the vast majority of our country completely distracted and entertained, while completely ignorant of the violence our country causes; of the ecological consequences of our daily life; of how, where, and under what labor conditions resources are extracted, and subsequently assembled into the ephemeral consumer products of our capitalist existence; of basic issues of cause and effect; of even the most elementary level of critical thinking, all the while eternally testing (No Child Left Behind) and forcing the rote memorization of trivia, lies, distortions, and propaganda; and continuously instilling a pathologically destructive belief in American Exceptionalism — a cultish religion which is capable of excusing any level of violence, genocide (Iraq, nuking Japan, firebombing Dresden) and destruction because “we mean well.” It requires vocal public support for the cult belief in endless growth which is cutting out the support systems necessary for life on this planet exponentially faster. It requires vocal public support for the murderous ideology that people should service capital, rather than capital servicing human needs, that is to say, Capitalism – an ideology based upon individual greed and societal atomization, which even most here on this blog believe COULD SOMEHOW (????) be properly regulated and restrained before it consumes the entire planet, ouroboros-like, including the proverbial final noose. All of the above, by definition, is supported by BO categorically, wholeheartedly, and without precondition.
It requires support for the continued socially unsustainable upward redistribution of wealth — albeit, with a few Clintonite sops thrown in to quell the masses (Almost one trillion in combined profits for the energy giants — oil, coal, nuclear), while perhaps several billion will be very publicly spread around (mostly to large corporations) for “renewables” and coal gasification, etc. It requires support for Insurance company based, privately afforded and purchased, donut-riddled, safety-net catastrophic illness systems; no health care system; uncritical support for the vampirish drug and cancer industry, which encourages the upward redistribution of wealth and impoverishment of the underclass by the creation of all manner of narrow-minded, blindered, complicit specialists, often paid upwards of half a million dollars a year (as if dispensing drugs were really more difficult than fixing brakes on a car, both of which are “life-affecting”), to dispense drugs, radiation, and surgery, to what has exploded from one-in-thirteen to one-in-three, projected to reach one-in-two of our population within my lifetime, all the while ostrich-like sticking their educated, pampered heads in the sand to the obvious causes to this epidemic, amelioration of which would be “politically unacceptable.” It requires support for a universal soma-like national medication system, involving up to one in three of the population, so that they don’t completely freak-out by whatever small bits of actual reality of our situation actually does creep in; so that they don’t feel personal or collective pain, but can still feel jingoistic national frenzy; while heedlessly polluting our waterways with their drug-laden urine, causing havoc among fish and wildlife .
It requires all of this, and more — infinitely more than I care to detail in this short post — and none of the corporations which invested over half a billion dollars in BO’s selection have any doubt in his (or his running mates, should he falter as JFK did) ability to continue to perpetrate these crimes against humanity and life itself. (Strange how little interest in voting irregularities the left suddenly has now that their side has won.)
Pravda recently stated that compared to the Bush regime, only the devil could be worse. Perhaps they are right. But there is a remarkable continuity of violence in support of the perpetration of empire (“Our way of life,” if you will) from Presidency to Presidency. Every single President has supported all of what I have described above, unwaveringly, as will BO. All of them have worked ceaselessly to expand economic influence, kill off peasants and natives, and spread around the girdle of the globe as fast as possible — like some sort of out-of-control human yeast infection, laying claim to every thing, concept, and idea they have come across. All of them have come up with pitifully puerile, and pathologically violent, “Doctrines,” excusing or justifying all of this for State Historians and Public Intellectuals to analyze, normalize, natter over on talk shows, and otherwise drool over for the edification of the masses.
Not even the most hysterical person I have encountered has expected BO to continue, or exceed, Bush’s level of overt confrontation. But not even the most optimistic, most Kool-Aid-inebriated groupie expects BO to reverse all of the damage done by Bush — to be able to miraculously bring us back to the exalted, whistfully reminisced year, 2000, when only two-thirds of Iraq was being bombed daily.
The “Ratchet Effect” is the operative metaphor here. We will get a troop drawdown in Iraq, and the closing of Gitmo. (These items are elite planner consensus, and would have happened even if McCain had magically been selected won. We will not get a cessation of violence world-wide, in any way. The Empire is a shark which consumes all in its path and it will continue to be so. We will not get the closing of the many other Gulags of Empire beside Gitmo, many in other “friendly” countries, most unknown to all but a few who monitor CIA plane landings world-wide, and unpublicized. We will not get a redefinition of torture, nor will we get a restoration of the constitutional rights taken away from us. Instead, we will get another faux-terrorist 9-11, a further crack-down on our freedoms (small as they are), further monitoring of all behavior, the introduction and normalization of a new family of offensive weapons: so-called “non-violent” crowd control technologies, of which tasers are merely the first public launching, continued spying, filming, data-mining of all of our actions, resulting in the public culling of a vocal few to great calmative effect upon the many. Under Holbrooke, Albright, Ross, Powers, and Rice (and Soros), we will get fewer “offensive” wars, and more “humanitarian” ones, and, of course, a huge ratcheting up of economic ones (begun already by the IMF and commodities price manipulation). (Yugoslavia and Rwanda have been adequately discussed here. The violence inflicted upon civilian life and structure is identical regardless of the justifications of Empire.) We will get more NGO intervention (read your Arundhati Roy on this pernicious weapon) to “aid” the afflicted.
The style of this administration will be much better, easier on the eye and the ear: We will be treated to the intelligent (if equally deceitful) disquisitions of a Clinton, along with the now ubiquitous (hollow) national self-congratulatory Afro-American, Horatio Alger story — four years from State Senator to President — and to the Kennedy-like Camelot cult fairy tale of a young couple steering a nation towards a new, even greater, America. We’ll feast our eyes on better clothes, savor over better meals being prepared in the White House, and proudly watch as all manner of liberal Public Intellectuals fawn over the new power couple at Affairs of State. Perhaps Maya Angelou will even write a poem:

Here on the pulse of this new day
You may have the grace to look up and out
And into your sister’s eyes, into
Your brother’s face, your country
And say simply
Very simply
With hope
Good morning.

(She wrote those lines before NAFTA, before welfare reform, before the US abetted bloody coups in Rwanda, and Haiti, and before the half million dead children in Iraq — which not a single member of the ruling elite sought to contradict the bi-partisan sentiment that it was all, somehow, in Albright’s dark wording, “worth it.”)
And the symbolizism will be much softer. We will hear talk about humanity’s needs, and nation’s struggles against bad leaders and violent renegade movements, who must be overthrown for the welfare of the people. But nothing I’ve detailed above will change in the least. The vast bi-partisan death juggernaut will miss nary a beat. If our President appears less extreme, the climate (in more ways than one) will become even more extreme. And yet, perhaps the Cubs will finally go all the way one of these next four years. So we do have hope and there is much to look forward too.
But, seriously: In light of the vast, bi-partisan, undiscussed but universally accepted narrative and agenda, and the monstrous destruction it causes world-wide, focusing on BO’s purported, public-image manipulated, personality traits – his “decency as a human being”; or as NPR does in support of the cult-of-personality of the President, eternally filling dead air time with endless chipper-voiced stories of BO’s poker playing aptitude and strategy, his version of manhood compared to the hip-hop model, and anything else that the thirty-something, well-adjusted, metrosexual, young producers can mine from the cartoon-addled recesses of their normalized imaginations – imaginations which can dream up anything imbued with diaphanous “hope,” but are repulsed by “downers” like death and destruction – is, as I said above – completely irrelevant.

Posted by: Malooga | Nov 11 2008 12:06 utc | 78

Yes, Malooga, very good post. You pretty well covered it all there, although in detail, every U.S. President has not supported all these policies. Immediately after the American Revolution, the aims of empire were probably not so global in nature. And what if I’m not a Cubs fan?

Posted by: Rick | Nov 11 2008 14:24 utc | 80

Obama’s Plan To Expand Afghan War/Get Bin Laden

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Nov 11 2008 16:04 utc | 82

Obama:
We cannot continue to rely only on the military in order to achieve the national security objectives we have set. We gotta to have a civilian security force that is just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded. (Applause.)
The clip is over the top but shows him, was on the top of google.youtube
The ‘new social contract’ – national unity has to be achieved once more; individualism and ME-me-me! has to be tamped down. If the country is to do something for you, you must participate and do something for it. (ask not…etc.) Kerry withdrew his proposal for national citizen service (it was one year in the first draft (sic).)
Kerry, and Obama after him, struggle(d) to re-federate Amerika, re-create patriotism and national spirit, re-build allegiance. As they are unable, or unwilling, to reform crony capitalism, a rotten electoral system, a budget out of control, rampant discrimination and a racial-class system, unjust laws, education and health care, disastrous foreign policy, and many other ills, that is the only, repeat the Only, avenue left open. Firing up the base, appealing to the last vestiges of community spirit, the last stabs for the common good – even if it is follow the leader and bow down..
From one pov, it is a descent into fascism, à la Mussolini. Seen thru another lens, it is an attempt to change selfish consumerism, empty greed, isolation, disdain and worse for others, into some new grassroots, communal, positive movement, to affect, one can’t say overturn, the status quo.
Under a last reading, G. W. Bush and his now successor realise(d) that the sh*t would hit the fan some time around 2007 – 012 and to ‘save’ the American people it would be necessary to have efficient authoritarian measures in place. The right prefers jackboots, secrecy, occult laws, arbitrary arrests, information trawling, camps and secret killings; the left, more cosy indoctrination, soft power, co-optation, payment to influencers, etc.

Posted by: Tangerine | Nov 11 2008 17:25 utc | 84

I’m late to the party.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/09/AR2008110902394.html?hpid=topnews
U.S. Given a look at Swiss bank accounts.
FTA:
“Switzerland has a history of divulging information on bank clients when foreign law enforcement authorities present evidence of criminal activity by specific depositors. The recent disclosures are noteworthy because the Justice Department was asking for information on people whose names it did not have, the source said. The names and account information give prosecutors fresh leads to pursue. ”

Posted by: Jeremiah | Nov 11 2008 19:45 utc | 86

france 24: Local reports of Rwandan infiltration into DR Congo

Congolese rebel leader Laurent Nkunda claims he is not receiving help from neighbouring Rwanda. But locals in North Kivu province tell FRANCE 24’s Arnaud Zajtman there is an influx of Rwandan arms and troops from across the border.

Posted by: b real | Nov 12 2008 16:48 utc | 88

the yes men strike again!
Liberal Pranksters Hand Out Times Spoof

In an elaborate hoax, pranksters distributed thousands of free copies of a spoof edition of The New York Times on Wednesday morning at busy subway stations around the city, including Grand Central Terminal, Washington and Union Squares, the 14th and 23rd Street stations along Eighth Avenue, and Pacific Street in Brooklyn, among others.
The spurious 14-page papers — with a headline “IRAQ WAR ENDS” — surprised commuters, many of whom took the free copies thinking they were legitimate.
The paper is dated July 4, 2009, and imagines a liberal utopia of national health care, a rebuilt economy, progressive taxation, a national oil fund to study climate change, and other goals of progressive politics.
The hoax was accompanied by a Web site that mimics the look of The Times’s real Web site. A page of the spoof site contained links to dozens of progressive organizations, which were also listed in the print edition.

Posted by: b real | Nov 12 2008 20:10 utc | 90

national defense magazine: Researchers Debate Utility of Autonomous Armed Robots

When the Navy’s John Canning sat down at a table full of Pentagon lawyers in 2003 to ask what possible legal roadblocks there might be to sending autonomous armed robots into combat, he was surprised when they told him that doing so would be problematic.
Why? he asked.
“Because they could kill people,” he was told bluntly.
Of course they could, he thought. War is hell after all. Enemies die in combat.
No, really, he asked. These were judge advocate general attorneys, but they were combat veterans. One was a Marine.
He asked again, but their answer was the same.
Armed aerial robots have plied the skies over Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army is pressing ahead with development of ground robots that can roll down a street with a machine gun. But in these cases, there is a human in the decision-making loop.
Parallel work in research laboratories also continues on artificial intelligence, which would cut robots from their “tethers” and allow their operators to do other tasks. Sentry robots that can perform perimeter patrols without an operator constantly monitoring them are already in use.
Futurists see these efforts one day coming together. A robot soldier they say could conceivably move down a street and using advanced target and tracking systems, along with facial recognition software, spot a known terrorist and take him out.
Back in 2003, when Canning sat down with the lawyers, little of the legal, treaty and policy implications of moving down this path had been worked out.
“Legal issues must be addressed right up front. We’re going to be wasting our time if we don’t,” said Canning, who is chief engineer at the platform integration division, engagement systems department at the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren Division.
…
After consulting with lawyers, one basic tenet has been agreed upon.
“Let machines target other machines. Let men target men,” he said. In other words, autonomous armed robots would target the “bow and arrow, not the archer,” he said.
…
In this “only target machines” scenario, an armed robot would aim at an enemy’s rifle, not his between the eyes.
…
“People may still die, but it will be a secondary consequence,” Canning said.
…
Canning said there is only one such autonomous armed robot project in the pipeline — an Office of Naval Research armed sentry. That’s still on paper, he said.
“The hard part is finding the money,” he said.

Posted by: b real | Nov 13 2008 4:07 utc | 92