The Existentialist Cowboy: neocons

Showing posts with label neocons. Show all posts

Thursday, November 19, 2009

How GOP Bigots Scapegoat Obama

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

Hitler scapegoated jews! The American right wing now scapegoats Obama! Why are we surprised? The GOP/right wing is just doing what psychopathic screw-ups and habitual liars always do. They try to find someone else to blame.

Obama is an easy target! Because Obama is black the GOP can depend on getting the support of bigots without ever having to use that 'n' word themselves. They keep their collars lily white even as their motives are of darkest night! Their plans are drawn up on K-street; they don't have to get their hands dirty. Leave that to the rank and file bigots.

In response to my previous post, Noor al Haqiqa wrote:

That is probably one of the saddest vids [The Eagles, Last Resort] I have seen for awhile. Not because I don't delve into the mire a little too often, but because so much of that is part of my life. ...there are times I just want to hate the perpetrators of this situation, but I cannot for to do so would be giving them what they want ~ my soul.

I hear you. I am descended of Native Americans whom I believe were and would have been better stewards of this continent. At the same time, I am also descended of hard working Irish and Scottish immigrants who only wanted a chance in life. For many years --until the British lost the so-called 'Revolutionary War' --Native Americans and the new settlers lived peaceably. Several Native American chieftains were admitted to the Court of St James --Thayendanegea (Joselph Brant) most notably. Pocahontas, the Indian princess who helped the English colonists in Jamestown, Virginia, is buried in a churchyard in Gravesend, England. She died there in 1617 while trying to make her way back to her beloved native land --America.

I have often tried to fix a date on which we have all become pilgrims, the date on which we all lost 'our country'! What was the tipping point? When did we lose our grip? When did we find our 'Gravesend'? When did we lose our way among strangers?

I often recall the moment I witnessed in Houston's Jones Hall when amid thunderous applause Dan Rather introduced himself to a news conference attended by the media executives from across the nation. "Are you running for something," President Richard M. Nixon, already besieged by Watergate, asked Rather.

"No, Mr President!" Rather responded, "Are you?"

But it wasn't Watergate! We overcame and rose above Watergate. It was an old 'Western' in which the 'good guys' won. They did win, didn't they?

It was Reagan!

It was Reagan who finished the job. It was Reagan who stole the wealth of the nation and gave it to elites who did not produce it, did not deserve it and did nothing to earn it. The money changers were not driven from the temple. The temple was stolen by them. They call it the 'Fed'.

It was Reagan who pandered to ignorance, bigotry, hate, and prejudice. He could afford to pander; he was financed by a 'ruling elite', now just one percent of the entire population. It was Reagan who made psychopaths feel good about being psychopaths. It was Reagan who sold out America, broke the back of labor and exported U.S. industry and jobs to Japan and China.

Because of trends begun by Reagan, the U.S. is now at the very bottom of the CIA's 'World Fact Book' with the world's largest Negative Current Account Balance, formerly called the 'balance of trade deficit'. At the very top --with the world's largest positive Current Account Balance --is China to whom we have now exported our wealth. But because China must prop up the buck in order to sell to us via Wal-Mart, we would already be prostrate and penniless.

It was Reagan and the psychopathic ilk who followed him blindly over the cliff. It was the neo-imperialists, parasitic partners of the Military-Industial Complex, who dared dream of empire in the PNAC document: REBUILDING AMERICA’S DEFENSES Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century [PDF]. It was these neo-imperialists, called NECONS, who pined for a new a 'catalyzing event', a new 'Pearl Harbor', that would be exploited to justify a campaign of aggressive wars, in fact, war crimes punishable by death even under U.S. Codes, Title 18, Section 2441.

(a) Offense.— Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.

A so-called Neo-conservative movement 'Kristolized' in the 1960s, an obvious knee-jerk over-reaction to what was called a 'radical cultural revolution' that was perceived to have been taking place in the United States. Others just called it the 'Woodstock Generation'. Irving Kristol wrote: "If there is any one thing that neoconservatives are unanimous about, it is their dislike of the counter-culture."

It is frightening to think that the US may now be poised on the brink of collapse because stuffed-shirts like William Kristol were hopelessly, awkwardly square, had never smoked a joint, and thought Woodstock was a little cartoon bird!

America might still change but only after it has had a sea change of heart and mind. But until wealth inequality is addressed, the media returned to the people and the anti-American-anti-Constitution imperialists tried for war crimes and mass murder, nothing will change for the better. A drunk who will not recognize his problem is just a hopeless drunk, a 'druggie' a hopeless druggie and a thief will steal again if he thinks he can get away with it.

There are no quick fixes and I expected none from Obama. He is just a man --not a miracle worker. And it requires a miracle to save us from the pox that has been visited upon us by the real 'enemy'. It was Pogo who deplored the waste dumped in his swampland home and said: "The enemy is us!" Pogo was right!

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Origins of 'Islamophobia' in US Imperialism and Neo-Colonialism

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

'Islamophobia' in the U.S. is a top down phenomenon encouraged and exploited by the right wing. It is easier to whip up war fever if the populace is irrational, mindless, or unduly fearful of an entire class, religion or even race. A crooked, corrupt or illegitimate state is 'motivated' to encourage irrational fears among its populace. This was true of Rome, the Third Reich and it is true of the US. It is, perhaps, one of several harbingers of the fall of empire.

That 'Islamophobia' is a needless waste is proven by recent events.

Rev Michael Sinnott was freed in the early hours of Thursday morning. He said he was not harmed by his captors but was now "extremely exhausted".

"For long periods of time we had nothing at all to do, so we sat around in the hammocks and talked at length about religion," said Rev Sinnott, who was abducted on October 11 while taking a walk in his garden.
"We discussed ideology and they explained to me what they believed and I then explained what I believed. There were no problems and they treated me very well despite the difficult conditions.
-- Freed Irish priest 'treated well by Muslim kidnappers'

As appears to be the case with most of the US's most ill-considered 'adventures' and propaganda campaigns, Islamaphobia is all about 'oil' and how the US may justify its theft! Clearly, US adventures in the middle east are all about oil --a resource desperately needed by the US which had been, at one time, a leading producer.

The US finds it easier to 'sell' a war if it has been attacked by a class that is different. 911, clearly an inside job, a pretext for war, is the best example. 911 was --in fact --the 'catalyzing event' hoped for, perhaps planned for, by NEOCONS who drafted the infamous PNAC document: "REBUILDING AMERICA’S DEFENSES, Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century"

The passage reads as follows:

"Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor."

Some context: the fall of the Berlin Wall, the break up of the old 'Soviet Union', the rise of Mikhail Gorbachev --all left the US without an easily exploited external enemy, one that might play the very role NEOCONS had hoped it might --that of providing a 'catalyzing event' around which right wing militarists, imperialists, oil fascists and would-be war criminals would rally a sheeple!

Why I moderate comments
SPAM: 'comments' that link to junk, 'get rich' schemes, scams, and nonsense! These are the worst offenders.
Ad hominem attacks: 'name calling' and 'labeling'. That includes the ad hominem: 'truther' or variations!

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Saturday, October 31, 2009

How Foreign Lobbies and Elites 'Bought' the US

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

FASCISM is a radical and authoritarian nationalist political policy defined by a corporatist economic ideology enforced by a dictatorial regime which, in turn, is supported by a symbiotic business/corporate community.

In pre-war Germany, Hitler held a meeting with his corporate backers. He cut them all a 'deal' and, in turn, was rewarded with their enduring support and they by his LUCRATIVE DEFENSE CONTRACTS. It was I.G. Farben which manufactured Zyklon 'B' used to murder Jews, gypsies and non-Nazis in concentration camps.

In the US just one percent of the nation's population has benefited from GOP (right wing) tax cuts. I have charged that the 'tax cuts' are, rather, an elaborate money laundering scheme in which the 'ruling elite' is paid a return on its investment, that is, the purchase of the US government by way of its pimps on K-Street.

Read the US govt stats re: income inequalities. Income inequalities in the US are instructive, the result of an ongoing auction of the US government to domestic and foreign lobbies. Glaring correlations not accidental: terrorism is worse under GOP regimes and --at the same time --income disparities increase. US tax policy, for example, favors the rich and, of late, just one percent of the US population which is enriched by those policies.

The area around K Street in Washington, D.C., abounds with lobbyists, many of whom represent foreign governments or entities. Although some major foreign governments continue to work mainly through their embassies in Washington, nearly one hundred countries rely on lobbyists to protect and promote their interests. The subculture of public relations and law firms that do this kind of work reflects a steady decline and privatization of diplomacy -- with an increasing impact on how the United States conducts its own foreign policy.
The strongest lobbies promoting foreign interests are driven by cohesive ethnic population groups in the United States, such as Armenia, China, Greece, India, Israel, Taiwan, Ukraine, and, historically, Ireland. Even countries that have strong bilateral relations with the United States, such as Australia, Japan, and Norway, need lobbyists as well as embassies. Lobbyists can operate within the system in ways that experienced diplomats cannot. A lobbying group can identify with a domestic ethnic bloc even though it is paid by a foreign government. Ethnic politics can trump corporate interests and, more important, influence what agencies within the U.S. government may see as the national interest.Illustration by Ib Ohlsson
The United States is a nation of immigrants -- a strength that has also created vulnerabilities. Although ethnic population groups have at times offset isolationist tendencies in the United States, they also can find themselves conflicted on issues that could divide the motherland from the adopted country, the United States. In other cases, these so-called hyphenated groups unhesitatingly side with the United States and, in effect, become more royalist than the king.
--Diplomacy Inc., The Influence of Lobbies on U.S. Foreign Policy

Thursday, April 02, 2009

Tiptoeing Through the Tulips with Netanyahu

by Omyma

Just when you thought the dastardly Neocons were history, out comes their most staunch supporter and, one could even argue, inventor - Israel! Nary a word is said against them, even after the Gaza massacre, since everyone is real scared of that Boogyman of Boogymen, the dreaded Israel PAC.

And one of those who does not feel in the mood for political suicide right now is our Prez, Barack Obama. Quite understandably. One hopes that he would be one of the few people alive who could walk that razor-sharp line between Our Sacred Relationship With the Hallowed Existence of Israel and the Facing the Hideous Reality of What Israel Is Actually Doing.

Most politicians, when it comes to Israel, have no choice but to tiptoe through the tulips. What else can you do? It's practically a political rite of passage to the American Halls of Power to don the yarmuk? and make a pilgrimage to, if not Israel itself, at least a few high-profile bar mitzvahs. Even "liberals" like Hillary Clinton and Obama have to change course - anything smelling of pro-Palestinian rights (am I tagged yet?) has got to be purged from the discourse. It's always about-face for Palestine, gung-ho militarism for Israel. Anything else would mean becoming The Human Pariah.

Now the Israelis, in their push to see just how far they can go, after bulldozing the civilian population of Gaza in cold blood, elected the Supreme Neocon Militant himself, Benjamin Netanyahu. And, true to form, he's upping the ante, claiming if Barack doesn't stop Iran from gaining nukes, he will - the old-fashioned neocon way, namely, a "strategic pre-emptive strike." Oh, that Netanyahu, at it again!

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Sunday, March 16, 2008

Dances with Wolfowitz, et al

by Len Hart, The Existentialist Cowboy

A party whore will hug anyone. A dance or a pose, it doesn't go well with the lipstick or the disguise. McCain --the self-styled, 'straight-talking moderate'--dances with radical, Zionist war-mongers and neocons, 'promising' them and the Military/Industrial complex that the US may stay in Iraq for 100, 10,000, possibly '...a million years". Should McCain get elected, I would not be surprised if Wolfowitz himself came in out of the cold to claim vindication.

On CBS’s Face The Nation last week, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) claimed Americans would not be “concerned” if the US spends “10,000 years” in Iraq. Earlier in the week, he said it “would be fine with” him if the US military stayed in Iraq for “a hundred years” or even a “million years.” Despite his push for an indefinite presence in Iraq, McCain somehow had a “wide advantage” yesterday with New Hampshire Republicans who “disapproved of the war“:
Exit polls found 64 percent of Tuesday’s Republican voters still support the conflict — and Romney, whose criticism of Bush’s management of the war has been muted, led McCain among those voters. But among the 34 percent who said they disapproved of the war, McCain had a wide advantage over the GOP field — even over Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the sole advocate of a US withdrawal in the Republican field.
--‘10,000 years’ McCain wins anti-war GOP vote.

Sure --Paul Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld are gone but "neoconservatives" were and continue to be the ideological well-spring of Bush's quagmire. Kissing up to such ilk is a high price to pay a kooky cult for their support.

Most neoconservative defense intellectuals have their roots on the left, not the right. They are products of the influential Jewish-American sector of the Trotskyist movement of the 1930s and 1940s, which morphed into anti-communist liberalism between the 1950s and 1970s and finally into a kind of militaristic and imperial right with no precedents in American culture or political history. Their admiration for the Israeli Likud party's tactics, including preventive warfare such as Israel's 1981 raid on Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor, is mixed with odd bursts of ideological enthusiasm for "democracy." They call their revolutionary ideology "Wilsonianism" (after President Woodrow Wilson), but it is really Trotsky's theory of the permanent revolution mingled with the far-right Likud strain of Zionism. Genuine American Wilsonians believe in self-determination for people such as the Palestinians.
--Michael Lind, How Neoconservatives Conquered Washington and Launched a War.

McCain sold out for the support of 'sixty-seven percent' of GOP voters. Quick --what's 67 percent of 33 percent? Any way you figure it, that's not enough to get you elected 'President'. McCain will have to steal the election! No problem!

One may be forgiven for not knowing how to characterize McCain: kiss-up or extremist. In any case, McCain is what you get by kissing up to 'extremists', fear mongers who created a war upon a pack of criminal, treasonous lies for the very purpose of misleading the nation.

The GOP is easily fooled by extremists and even more so today. Even so --Fred Thompson did not get far with Neocon tough talk. [See: The Talking Neocon 'Tough Love’ Doll]

In 1964, the GOP paid a high price for having eschewed Nelson Rockefeller for the Goldwater road to extremism. Interestingly, the GOP has gone so far today, that Goldwater would be compared to Ron Paul, a libertarian, or perhaps even a moderate.

Bogged down in a war that has already bankrupted the US and gutted the dollar, McCain's war of 10,000 years will simply finish off the American dream of freedom or --worse --exchange it for a theocratic big brother and FEMA camps secure from prying eyes. It is a symptom of the sickness of which the GOP is symptomatic, that Bush has visited upon America what Barry Goldwater --an 'extremist' in 1964 --warned this nation about back in 1964!

Those who seek absolute power, even though they seek it to do what they regard as good, are simply demanding the right to enforce their own version of heaven on earth. And let me remind you, they are the very ones who always create the most hellish tyrannies. Absolute power does corrupt, and those who seek it must be suspect and must be opposed.
--Barry Goldwater, Candidate for US President, 1964

Goldwater could not have understood or appreciated the dangers posed by his own party. When he said extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, he most certainly had not foreseen the pernicious nature of Bush/Neocon extremism. He had not paid attention to the warning that GOP President Dwight Eisenhower issued with regard to the Military/Industrial complex. Goldwater was prescient but not nearly enough to save us from the GOP.

Addendum

SHUT DOWN THE IRS / SHUT DOWN THE WAR
On March 19, 2008, we will set up a nonviolent blockade of the national Internal Revenue Service headquarters in Washington, DC, as part of the day of actions against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Just as military recruiters supply the bodies for the war, the IRS supplies the funding. Just as some soldiers have the courage to resist the war, we — as tax payers — should have the courage to resist paying the taxes that send soldiers to war. We call on all war opponents to help dramatize our opposition and to disrupt business as usual by joining this nonviolent blockade.

For at least this one day — March 19, 2008 — we need to create a disturbance in the smug complacency of the IRS/Pentagon money-axis. ...

Monday, August 27, 2007

Why and How Governments Betrayed Our Dreams of Freedom With Lies and Incompetence

Politicians the world over have created for themselves a new role. In the past, a BBC documentary says, politicians promised to deliver a better world, to help us realize our dreams of freedom and Democracy. Political power, authority, legitimacy itself was thus derived from the optimistic visions of the world's various peoples.

Politicians have betrayed that view. They have betrayed us. A new BBC documentary claims that politicians have found new ways to cling to illegitimate power, new ways to exploit fears, new ways to terrorize and enslave the world. Having promised dreams, the best governments can do is sell a grandiose protection racket called "war".

Briefly, the governments of the world, most notably the US and the United Kingdom, exploit the phantom terrorists of al Qaeda even as radical "Islamcists" exploit US neocons, Bush and similar ilk. Part two:

Part Three:

There are a total of six parts on You Tube. Search for "The Power of Nightmares - Part I".

The conclusion is clear to everyone but Bush, the Neocons and their extremist right wing base: the "Islamacist" movement owes its existence to the likes of Bush and Bush owes his political existence to Islam fanatics. A plague on both their houses.

Governments have given up the dream of peace. The Orwellian nightmare, the state of perpetual war, has come true but cannot be sustained. Worse than "mutually assured destruction", this universal exploitation of nightmare spells an end to humankind, at least the end of those dreams that make life worth living. It was an avoidable choice forced upon us by incompetent, cowardly and corrupt leadership.

In the US, more have begun to question the Bush modus operandi of exploiting our nightmares, our fears of "radical Islam", a prospect at least as terrifying as "radical Christianity" and the equally ideological, rabid "Christianist" movement which overtly seeks to make of the US a theocracy. Should either side "win", people themselves will be enslaved to nonsense, claptrap and ideology, nothing less than a new dark age.

What is the date of America's descent into madness? It might have been Pearl Harbor. Certainly, the US helped meet the very real threat posed by Hitler's Third Reich, but, in retrospect, our leaders may have learned all the wrong lessons. Did they learn only that FDR grew in strength by promising to protect Americans from the spectres of world wide fascism and Nazism? Did Saddam become Bush's "Hitler"? Did the GOP who hated FDR learn how to manufacture a state of crisis? Why is the GOP the party of the war on drugs, the war on porn, the war on immigration, the war on Murphy Brown and now --the war on terrorism?

America's descent into madness may be traced to the assassination of JFK. Almost everyone I've talked to about this --especially those old enough to remember it --have stated in various words that those tragic events marked the beginning of the "weirdness". It was most certainly followed by the murder of John Kennedy's brother, Robert and Martin Luther King, Jr. In the sixties, a naive dream of freedom became a drug induced nightmare exploited by the likes of Richard Nixon and, later, Ronald Reagan. More recently, the mysterious deaths of Sen. Paul Wellstone and Robert Kennedy were and remain "convenient" for Bush and the corporate right wing. What are the odds that only the GOP benefits from suspicious deaths, themselves at odds with "odds"?

It was pointed out on this blog very recently that the government version of events is almost always a lie. In general, every government lies in order to cover up its own incompetence, protect the criminality of its allies, or to cover up its own criminal complicity, possibly a combination of all three. Lies about JFK and 911 are most certainly of this ilk. Those lies may be found in the Warren Commission report and, more recently, the report of the 911 Commission.

Both the JFK murder and 911 have at least this much in common:

Both investigations were incomplete and incompetent.
Both events benefited an increasingly radical, rabid and ruthless right wing.
Both "investigations" proposed an "official theory", a plausible cover story.
Both investigations demonized differing versions as conspiracy theories.

In fact, both incidents --the JFK murder and the 911 attacks --were the catalysts for the very method by which the US government maintains its power and authority over us. As the BBC documentary points out so well: the US government exploits our worst fears and nightmares. The US government encourages and feeds them.

Why are Americans so fearful of the word "conspiracy" when, in fact, almost every US Supreme Court decision of any importance deals with conspiracies of one sort or another. Check the resources of Findlaw and the Cornell Law School law library. You will find hundreds if not thousands of court decisions, case law and precedent, having to do with conspiracies. That's a lot of case law spent on something that does not exist.

More specifically, what is "al Qaeda" if not a conspiracy? What was la Cosa Nostra if not a conspiracy? What is Bush's GOP if not a conspiracy? The government will demonize "conspiracy" when it's in its interest, but will celebrate the concept when "conspiracy" benefits the entrenched power. The government's' official lie re: 911 is one of the most absurd conspiracy theories to ever come down the pike and easily disproved with but a few indisputable facts not told you by the MSM. Some seven or eight of the 911 hijackers survived to give interviews to the BBC. Only thermite or thermate will melt steel. WTC owner Larry Silverstein ordered that Buildling 7 be "pulled".

When Bush warned Americans that his administration would be intolerant of outrageous conspiracy theories, he obviously excluded his own administration, itself, like Nixon's before him, a criminal conspiracy that ought to be investigated and prosecuted under RICO statues. Every time, Richard Nixon met, in the Oval Office, to confer with the likes of Herrs Haldeman and Ehrlichman, he "conspired" to defraud the citizens of the US. Every time, Bush met with Dick Cheney in the Oval Office, you can bet he engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the citizens of the US with wars of naked aggression, punishable by death under US Codes, Title 18, Section 2441.

The purpose of commissions like Warren and 911 was not to get at the "truth". The purpose of the Warren Commission was to shoot holes (with a Mannlicher Carcano, no doubt) into the idea that JFK was offed by a conspiracy, a gang representing subversive, right wing interests. In the case of 911, the commission's job was to rubber stamp the official conspiracy theory and paper over the gaping holes with bullshit.

In a world made more dangerous by government criminality, terrorism becomes a self-fullfilling prophecy. Bush would not have survived his first term without al Qaeda and al Qaeda has grown stronger thanks to Bush. Since the murder of JFK, the government of the US cannot be trusted and the events of 911 have only made it worse. Sadly, it will not help to pinpoint the date when the US government ceased to be legitimate.

Georges Santayana once said that those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it; but whomever said History is a trick played on the dead may have had the fascist, imperialist government of the United States in mind.

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