A LITTLE REBELLION

Russell and Musial Get Dishonored

In the voluntary marketplace of professional sports and the legacy of the all-time greats, Bill Russell and Stan Musial are universally known as two of the best that ever played their games.

They are legends, iconic figures, and class acts in the midst of an era filled with tattoo-covered narcissists.

Unfortunately, they have been utterly disgraced. They have just been given the Presidential Medal of "Freedom," and share this blessed honor with the mass-murdering war criminal George Bush Sr., who also just received the medal.

Russel and Musial have earned their status in society by entertaining millions, working hard, winning championships, and never once coercing others in their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Bush - former CIA Director, military bureaucrat, and slaughterer of thousands - has spent his whole life in the parasitic state class, "serving the public."

It's a shame Russell and Musial have had their names and legacies tarnished this way!

Shredding the Constitution is Defending it

According to the Conservative Political Action Committee.

Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld will receive the "Defender of the Constitution" award at CPAC this year.

The award will be presented by David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, which organizes CPAC, and right-wing talk show host Brad O'Leary, who recently wrote a book called America's War On Christmas, because he said President Obama "declared that America is not a Christian nation."

Previous recipients of the award include Former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who got it in 2010, and Rush Limbaugh, who was honored in 2009.

What else do you expect from the results of the Coup of 1787?

The US Empire, Unmasked

Watch this video about the largest wealth-confiscating, liberty-destroying government program in the history of the world: the US Empire. It truly is a monster, turning boys into killers, countries into mountains of skulls, and sucking out the soul of the last vestiges of true American liberty. War, as Randolph Bourne famously said, truly is the health of the state. 

What Happened to the Antiwar Movement?

From Reason.TV:

 

The Silver Lining of the Obama Administration: A Left/Right Coalition?

(Via PolicyMic.com)

In his recent piece concerning the first two years of Barack Obama's presidency, Samuel Hamilton argues that President Obama should be praised for his legislative victories and his ability to compromise on important issues. Obama's accomplishments or failures can be (and have been) debated ferociously, and Hamilton makes some excellent points about how much criticism of Obama has been unfair and partisan.

Halfway through his first term, what the Obama presidency is accomplishing has less to do with the utility of his proposed policies, but more to do with the fact these policies are bringing a welcome and radical ideological shift.

When former presidential candidate Ralph Nader appeared on Andrew Napolitano's "Freedom Watch" last week and lavishly praised Republican Congressman Ron Paul and the "conservative/libertarian wing of the Tea Party," there emerged the silver lining of the Obama administration: the possibility of a Left/Right coalition that could shake up American political discourse for years to come.

Despite Obama's sobering rhetoric, his insistence on fulfilling President George W. Bush's third term is warping the traditional partisan divide. Obama, the "liberal Democrat," has extended the PATRIOT Act, expanded the war in Afghanistan and spread it into Pakistan, is launching unmanned drone strikes in multiple countries, and has drastically increased cartelizing state intervention into the marketplace.

As dangerous and counterproductive as these policies are, they are having the unintentional consequence of disrupting the outdated liberal/conservative divide.

When it comes to policy, liberals and conservatives in power vary little, and every few years they swap control of the federal government and reward the political interests that helped get them elected. This "divide-and-conquer" strategy has been used for centuries, where citizens bicker and quarrel with one another while ignoring those in power that tax, loot, spend, and bury them in debt.

Thanks to the spread of the Internet and the availability of nearly instantaneous information, issues are beginning to be framed not in Left or Right, but in terms of individual liberty vs. government control.

For example, in a poll taken last December, a significant majority of Americans supported auditing the counterfeiters at the Federal Reserve. Coincidentally, a bill (HR 1207) proposed on the House floor by Congressman Paul (R-TX)  that aimed to audit the Fed received support from arch-conservative Senator Jim Demint (R-SC) and admitted socialist Bernie Sanders (I-VT). HR 1207 currently has over 320 co-sponsors in the House, which also means that there a lot of Congressmen who love having their own printing presses in order to sell F-22s and bailout crooked banks.

What do Left and Right exactly mean when Noam Chomsky and Naomi Wolf are criticizing the Obama administration for it's economic corporatism and expansion of Bush's "war on terror" and conservatives are supporting gay marriage and the financial costs of military empire?

Since 21st century America resembles the Soviet Empire more than the peaceful, commercial Republic Thomas Jefferson envisioned, Left and Right are recognizing that it is coercive state power that lies at the heart of the mess we're in. It is radical, yes, but a system of government that imprisons millions, takes half of your income, and wages perpetual war deserves a radical opposition.

Restoring the Bill of Rights, stopping corporate welfare, sound money, starving the Pentagon; these are things Americans (especially younger generations) are getting behind now that they are refusing to be boxed into labels of Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative.

So thank you Mr. Obama (and you neocons too) for digging us into an even deeper mess. You have bankrupted our grandchildren and left foreign cities in ashes, and we're fed up. You have shown the American people that Democrat bombs maim just like Republican bombs, that deficits and violations of personal liberty grow no matter who is in charge.

In other words, there is no such thing as "abusing power;" power itself is the abuse. And with every new war and corporatist law, a Left/Right coalition with this axiom as its flag will only grow.

The Value of a Muslim Life in the Eyes of the US Empire

According the murderous and sadistic US government, Muslim deaths in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia (and the other countries the US is sure to be intervening in) at the hands of the US war machine are nothing more than an ignorable statistic. Collateral damage, as the Politburo calls the mountain of skulls the US military leaves in its path:

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, now, as the U.S. is losing its edge economically, it has one clear comparative advantage. And that’s in killing. And it’s using it. Obama has increased the attacks on Afghanistan, Pakistan. Brookings Institution last year estimated that for every one militant, as they put it, killed in Pakistan, the U.S. drones kill 10 civilians. –Allan Nairn: As U.S. Loses Its Global Economic Edge, Its "One Clear Comparative Advantage is in Killing, and It’s Using It," Democracy NOW!, December 29, 2010

 How does The Drone Equation compare to other approved "collateral damage" equations? Well, during the Bush Administration, if a bombing strike was expected to kill more than 29 innocent men, women and children, the White House had to approve it. What would that be like . . . .

In the case of The Obama Administration, the acceptable "collateral damage" kill number has, apparently, been increased to 50 innocent civilians.

On the bright side, if you stay with groups larger than 50, the U.S. militaryindustrialcongressional complex may at least need a presidential order before it can kill you by mistake.

We're #1! We're #1!

In empire, occupation, and self promotion, says Tom Engelhardt and William Astore:

Words matter, as candidate Barack Obama said in the 2008 election campaign.  What to make, then, of President Obama’s pep talk last month to U.S. troops in Afghanistan in which he lauded them as “the finest fighting force that the world has ever known”?  Certainly, he knew that those words would resonate with the troops as well as with the folks back home.

In fact, this sort of description of the U.S. military has become something of a must for American presidents.  Obama’s predecessor George W. Bush, for example, boasted of that military as alternately “the greatest force for freedom in the history of the world” and “the greatest force for human liberation the world has ever known.”  Hyperbolic and self-promoting statements, to be sure, but undoubtedly sincere, reflecting as they do an American sense of exceptionalism that sits poorly with the increasingly interconnected world of the twenty-first century.

I’m a retired U.S. Air Force officer and a historian who teaches military history.  The retired officer in me warms to the sentiment of our troops as both unparalleled fighters and selfless liberators, but the historian in me begs to differ.

Let’s start with the fighting part of the equation.  Are we truly the world’s greatest fighting force, not only at this moment, but as measured against all militaries across history?  If so, on what basis is this claim made?  And what does such triumphalist rhetoric suggest not just about our national narcissism, but Washington’s priorities?  Consider that no leading U.S. politician thinks to boast that we have the finest educational system or health-care system or environmental policies “that the world has ever known.” 

Measured in terms of sheer destructive power, and our ability to project that power across the globe, the U.S. military is indeed the world’s “finest” fighting force.  Our nuclear arsenal remains second to none.  Our air forces (including the Navy’s carrier task forces, the Army’s armada of helicopter gunships, and the CIA’s fleet of unmanned aerial drones prosecuting a “secret” war in Pakistan) dominate the heavens.  Our Navy (“a global force for good,” according to its new motto) rules the waves -- even more so than old Britannia did a century ago.  And well should we rule the skies and seas, given the roughly one trillion dollars a year we spend on achieving our vision of “full spectrum dominance.”

Read the rest here.

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

A message for the Predator-in-Chief, from Peacerally.org:

 

Panic in DC

Thank God for the Internet. In the last few hours, the web has given us the beginning of Wikileaks' release of hundreds of thousands of new cables documenting nearly everything there is about the inner workings and dealings of US foreign policy (a run-down of the leaked cables are here).

Thanks to the tireless individuals who make the decentralized and instantaneous news processing of the web work, we now know that the evil Saudi Regime supposedly want the US to attack Iran, that the US bribed other countries to take its prisoners that were tortured, that Hillary Clinton's State Department is aggressively spying on other diplomats, that the US had the Yemeni President take the blame for its drone strikes, and that Iran and North Korea --two countries that are repaetedly threatened with mass murder by the US government-- are very, very friendly.

And that's just what was released today! Because of the combination of the amount of information possessed and the high demand, Wikileaks is suggesting that all of the documents will be released in the course of the next few months. So stay tuned (just follow Wikileaks on Twitter).

What's also making this even more enjoyable is watching the reaction of DC and entire mass media. They are starting to act like a boxer being pushed against the ropes, like a parasite under a microscope, panicked, sweating, and desperate.

Predictably, the Obama Administration has publicly condemned the release, calling it a "reckless and dangerous action." If you ask me, killing people with missiles shot from robots and putting a 100,000 troops in the graveyard of empires is a "reckless and dangerous action." This is how an empire functions when the public has the ability to discover, at their fingertips, that it does indeed have no clothes.

There's panic in Congress as well. Two of the biggest shills for the welfare-warfare state, Sens. Lindsey Graham and Claire McCaskill, are calling for the prosecution of Wikileaks. Bipartisanship at its finest:

Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) slammed international whistleblower WikiLeaks on Sunday, ahead of a reported data dump that opponents say could damage U.S. diplomatic efforts around the world.

“Leaking the material is deplorable,” Graham told Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday."

“The people at WikiLeaks could have blood on their hands,” he said, before admitting he wasn’t sure how the dump would affect the country’s strategic negotiations abroad.

“I don’t know what the cables may say, but we’re at war," Graham said. "The world is getting dangerous by the day. People who do this are low on the food chain as far as I’m concerned. If you can prosecute them, let’s try.”

With the release of these Wikileaks cables, Christmas really has come early. And with Assange and Co. promising more and more, it might just last all year.

Bush's Legacy

Seeing former President George W. Bush during the World Series was bad enough, but now we have to see this War Criminal go on TV to promote his new book and defend his Mongol-esque sacking of Iraq, his defense of torturing people to death, and right-wingers licking his boots.

There's plenty once can say about the legacy of W, but now that Obama's PR has effectively muted any discussion of the US's ongoing occupation of Iraq, let's take a look at what is currently going on in that "liberated" country. Via the AP:

BAGHDAD – Suspected Sunni militants took aim again at Baghdad's dwindling Christian community, setting off a dozen roadside bombs Wednesday and sending terrified families into hiding behind a church where walls are still stained from blood from an attack nearly two weeks ago.

Five people were killed and 20 were wounded in the bombings and mortar attacks that targeted Christians across the city, police and hospital officials said. Iraqi Christians are already reeling after the earlier attack on a Sunday Mass service left 68 people dead, and many are now wondering whether it's time to leave their homeland.

There was very little reporting of it, but the "Christian" Bush --who famously referred to Jesus as his favorite philosopher-- presided over an invasion that reduced the oldest Christian churches in the world to rubble and has effectively cleansed them from the region.

Oh ya, and the one million killed, millions more displaced, the rise of an Islamic theocracy in Iraq, the shredding of the Constitution, the massive expansion of the federal government and its police-surveillance-state, and crashing the economy with his Empire of Credit.

But don't think about that, that was soooo two years ago. Buy the book!!!

The Story of Spending

From FDR to Obama, this is how we got into this mess:

 

NYT Torture Euphemism Generator

Boingboing.com has discovered an easier (and hysterical) way for the New York Times to do what it does best: excuse and apologize for the crimes of the US government.

We Are All Enemy Combatants

Remember when the Bush Regime bent over backwards twisting the language of the law to justify indefinite detention, torture, and the imperial presidency? This resulted in the term "enemy combatants," meaning someone who can be stripped of their rights without due process and thrown in a cage forever.

And most people seemed to accept this massive power grab since it was done in the name of "national security," and since the torturing would only be done to scary Muslim gooks that lurked around every corner.

But all empires eventually turn inward, and now the Beltway chickenshit war hawks are revealing exactly what "enemy combatant" means: anyone who exposes and threatens the established order of perpetual war, corporatism, endless taxation, and police state slavery.

Via Antiwar.com:

Former State Department official Christian Whiton made his position clear, urging the president to designate WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as an “enemy combatant” and calling on the Cyber Command to launch attacks against “any telecommunications company” that they believe are in league with WikiLeaks.

Others raised the prospect of sending Assange to Guantanamo Bay, America’s favorite legal black hole. Still others insisted that the military should be “waging war” against the whistleblower organization, which has released nearly half a million classified documents showing a myriad of US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Wikileaks Iraq War Logs

The UK's Guardian has the Wikileaks "Iraq War Logs," a detailed documentation of every Iraqi death since the US invasion. The sheer numbers of innocent civilians that were slaughtered in the storm of the US war machine is staggering, not to mention the cities and infrastructure that was ruthlessly demolished and the millions of refugees that resulted.

This was all done in your name with your money and under the banner of the Stars and Stripes. Think about that the next time you're asked to salute the flag or sing along to the war-soaked national anthem.

UPDATE: The Independent has a great story on what else the Wikileaks War Logs reveales and how the US government tried desperately to hide it:

A detainee tortured with live electrical wires here, children shot by US troops at a checkpoint there, insurgents using children to carry out suicide bombings somewhere else; on and on, through 391,832 documents. At the Pentagon, these messages were the day-to-day commonplaces of staff inboxes; for Iraqis, they detail, in the emotionless jargon of the US military, nothing less than the hacking open of a nation's veins.

Today, seven and a half years on from the order to invade, the largest leak in history has shown, far more than has been hitherto known, just what was unleashed by that declaration of war. The Iraqi security services tortured hundreds, and the US military watched, noted and emailed, but rarely intervened. A US helicopter gunship crew were ordered to shoot insurgents trying to surrender. A doctor sold al-Qa'ida a list of female patients with learning difficulties so they could be duped into being suicide bombers. A private US company, which made millions of dollars from the outsourcing of security duties, killed civilians. And the Americans, who have always claimed never to count civilian deaths, were in fact secretly logging them. At a conservative estimate, the new documents add at least 15,000 to the war's death toll.

 

Repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell!

It's time to finally end one of this country's greatest injustices, the US military's official policy of "don't ask, don't tell" when it comes to civilian casualties. Just in this century, the Empire has killed at least a million Iraqis and thousands of Pashtuns in Afghanistan, with barely a murmur from the State-stenographers in the media. This policy is intentional, of course. As war criminal Tommy Franks once said, "we don't do body counts."

Because if a majority of American were aware, or cared, about our killing fields all over the globe, they might start to question some of the nauseating cliches that are indoctrinated into our minds by State schools and the mass media. Like how the U.S. government is "exceptional," "benevolent," bringing "liberty and democracy" to backwards people everywhere.

People might just come to the conclusion that the State is NOT a public servant, but a parasitical monster, looting, taxing, controlling, coercing, and killing in service of its political interests and the interests of those who cozy up to it. This is why it spends millions of dollars every year convincing you otherwise, the manufacturing of consent.

Without these myths, without the consent of the majority of the population, the State falls apart. For the sake of peace, individual liberty, order, and the free production of goods and services, it won't come soon enough.

On a side note, I just can not comprehend the national attention given to the other "don't ask, don't tell" policy concerning gays in the military. Why would ANYONE fight for the right to participate in the slaughter and destruction of villages, cities, and entire countries, to come home with missing limbs so that Lockheed Martin's stock goes up a few points? Gays have been persecuted for far too long by governments; they deserve better than military slavery.

The Empire Comes Home

Bradley Manning, the 22-year old U.S. soldier who leaked classified information to Wikileaks that takes the clothes off of the Empire, has been transferred to the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia.

Before that, he was RENDITIONED to Kuwait. Probably tortured too, who knows? I wouldn't put it past the military establishment.

After all, they have been extraordinary renditioning people for decades. Clinton tried it out in the 1990s, and Bush found it quite useful. Despite the obvious legal and ethical questions concerning the kidnapping and transfer of human beings to bases and prison around the globe, many have defended it on the grounds of "national security" and "terrorism." Translation: they're only doing it to brown-skinned people who talk funny and worship a different God then us.

But no empire just brutalizes foreigners; they eventually look inward. Cops (most of them intentionally ex-military) are conditioned to treat their subjects like they did in Baghdad and Kandahar, like an occupation force with little repercussion for an itchy trigger finger. Obama claims the right to assassinate a U.S. citizen!!!!!!!!

And now an American is being subjected to rendition. Who needs liberty when you got all this wonderful security?

'Congressional Report: $1 Trillion Spent on Wars Since 9/11'

$1 trillion spent on further garrisoning the globe, occupying countries, Predator drones, torture, and enriching DC's merchants of death. Now that's money well spent.

(via Antiwar.com)