Maintaining Order

How is it that Americans are so incredibly ignorant of many of these atrocities? How is it, for example, that most people do now know that in 1954 the United States overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran to install a Shah? The following video should be required viewing for any American who barks that we ought to invade Iran or, worse yet, "nuke Iran" (I've heard both of these on the street). This is insanity from a nation that claims to love liberties and spout pro-life rhetoric.

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The Power of Nightmares

I've  previously written about a BBC documentary called "The Power of Nightmares," but I want to mention it again because it repeatedly seems relevant. The following are the opening words the documentary :

In the past, the power of politicians promised to create a better world. They had different ways of achieving this, but their power and authority came from the optimistic visions they offered their people . . . Politicians were seen simply as managers of public life. But now they have discovered a new role that restores their apparent authority. Instead of delivering dreams, politicians now promise to protect us . . . from nightmares.
While reading the following passage from The Happiness Hypothesis (written by Jonathan Haidt), I was reminded of the "The Power of Nightmares":
When the moral history of the 1990s is written, it might be titled desperately seeking Satan. With peace and harmony ascendant, Americans seemed to be searching for substitute villains. We tried drug dealers (but then the crack epidemic waned) and a child abductors (who are usually one of the parents). The cultural right vilified homosexuals; the left vilified racists and homophobes. As I thought about these various villains, including the older villains of Communism and Satan himself, I realized that most of them share three properties: they are invisible (you can’t identify the evil one from appearance alone) their evil spreads by contagion, making it vital to protect impressionable young people from infection (for example from communist ideas, homosexual teachers, were stereotypes on television); and the villains can be defeated only if we all pull together as a team. It became clear to me that people want to believe they are on a mission from God, or that they are fighting for some secular good (animals, fetuses, women’s rights), and you can’t have much of a mission without good allies and a good enemy.

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Americans shop while families from Afghanistan bury their dead children

I'm not in a holiday mood at all. Weapons from my country keep killing adult and children civilians from Afghanistan and, based on America's newspapers, almost no one from the United States gives a crap. In fact, we are repeatedly hearing politicians and wanna-be politicians blithely talk of starting a war with Iran.  Add to the Afghanistan carnage that at least 168 children have been killed by U.S. drones in the ongoing illegal war in Pakistan. Now back to the dead civilians.  Quite often, my "leaders" claim that those who were killed were "insurgents," though we must keep in mind that this term has a nefarious real-life meaning: anyone who is killed by an American weapon is a insurgent, and there is no American media present on the ground to dispute these sorts of government claims. Sometimes, we do admit that we have killed civilians, and the "solution" is to apologize to the mourning families, as though that means anything to the weeping families. As Glenn Greenwald points out, these American killings of children are not unusual and they thus are morally reprehensible. These killings by America keep occurring the midst of a ten year so-called war that is costing America $2 Billion per week. This is a grotesque amount of money to spend on an activity that has no feasible morally justifiable objective. In the absence of any reasonably articulated objective, we are left with de facto objectives: We are indiscriminately killing children as part of our program to keep America's defense factories humming and to give American politicians an excuse to claim that they are "defending the United States." You'll find articles on Black Friday everywhere you look today.   If you are an American, you'll find almost nothing about the blood that is on your hands because you are not working hard enough to voice your opposition to this so-called "war" in Afghanistan.  Your friends, family and politicians desperately need to hear more from you (and from me).

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Sizing up the Occupy movement and the para-military government response

Glenn Greenwald describes the status of the Occupy movement, both the hope for continued vitality and the disturbing para-military response by our government.

The reason the U.S. has para-militarized its police forces is precisely to control this type of domestic unrest, and it’s simply impossible to imagine its not being deployed in full against a growing protest movement aimed at grossly and corruptly unequal resource distribution. As Madeleine Albright said when arguing for U.S. military intervention in the Balkans: “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?” That’s obviously how governors, big-city Mayors and Police Chiefs feel about the stockpiles of assault rifles, SWAT gear, hi-tech helicopters, and the coming-soon drone technology lavished on them in the wake of the post/9-11 Security State explosion, to say nothing of the enormous federal law enforcement apparatus that, more than anything else, resembles a standing army which is increasingly directed inward.
For those who want to help the protesters through the winter, Greenwald suggest that FireDogLake has done an excellent job of raising money to by cold weather clothing and gear for the protesters. If you would like to pitch in, visit FDL.

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America’s failed plan for Iraq

At TruthDig, Tom Englelhart takes a look at America's plan for Iraq and then examines the facts, concluding that it is the American nightmare.

Washington, though visibly diminished, remains an airless and eerily familiar place. No one there could afford to ask, for instance, what a Middle East, being transformed before our eyes, might be like without its American shadow, without the bases and fleets and drones and all the operatives that go with them. As a result, they simply keep on keeping on, especially with Bush’s global war on terror and with the protection in financial tough times of the Pentagon (and so of the militarization of this country).

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