Rise Up Canadians...

Exactly!

Canadians used to pride ourselves at being more versed in the nuances of global affairs and politics than our American brethren to the south. Politics, like hockey, has been a constant in our lives. The general population across the nation has always been aware of the pretentious and duplicitous musings of politicians and has punished those engaging in American styled demagoguery; until now.

In the above election ad, Michael Ignatieff discusses the level of apathy and disinterest in politics that has taken hold of Canadians. Some have referred to the above full throated stance as his Howard Dean moment. Maybe? However, we should remind ourselves that Dr. Dean was attacked from multiple flanks for standing up for beliefs that were fundamentally democratic and liberal. What those in opposition are really saying is that they want their team, the blue team, regardless of competence or adherence to accountablity, to win; even if it means jettisoning democratic values and principles to do so.

I think this is exactly what accountable government and liberal democracy is all about. As I've said before, Mr. Ignatieff's performance as Leader of the Opposition has been at best wanting. However, this call-to-arms of all Canadians to bring down the corpulent and criminally negligent Conservative party of Canada is what needs to be said. Every voter needs to carefully understand what is at stake to our democracy, if Stephen Harper and the Conservative party dimwits are elected to run the government again.

Stating the Obvious about Tuscon and American Politics

In fact, there is no balance—none whatsoever. Only one side has made the rhetoric of armed revolt against an oppressive tyranny the guiding spirit of its grassroots movement and its midterm campaign. Only one side routinely invokes the Second Amendment as a form of swagger and intimidation, not-so-coyly conflating rights with threats. Only one side’s activists bring guns to democratic political gatherings. Only one side has a popular national TV host who uses his platform to indoctrinate viewers in the conviction that the President is an alien, totalitarian menace to the country. Only one side fills the AM waves with rage and incendiary falsehoods. Only one side has an iconic leader, with a devoted grassroots following, who can’t stop using violent imagery and dividing her countrymen into us and them, real and fake. Any sentient American knows which side that is; to argue otherwise is disingenuous.

- George Packer, "Arguing Tuscon"

(h/t Kevin Drum, MotherJones.com, "Quote of the Day: No, Both Sides Aren't Equally Guilty")

Krugman on the toxicity of American Politics

Paul Krugman talks about the toxic atmosphere created by the right-wing and their corporate supporters in the media, that has lead America to this current and deadly state of affairs.  In the article he exposes the primary source for the vitriol.

The point is that there’s room in a democracy for people who ridicule and denounce those who disagree with them; there isn’t any place for eliminationist rhetoric, for suggestions that those on the other side of a debate must be removed from that debate by whatever means necessary.

And it’s the saturation of our political discourse — and especially our airwaves — with eliminationist rhetoric that lies behind the rising tide of violence.

Where’s that toxic rhetoric coming from? Let’s not make a false pretense of balance: it’s coming, overwhelmingly, from the right. It’s hard to imagine a Democratic member of Congress urging constituents to be “armed and dangerous” without being ostracized; but Representative Michele Bachmann, who did just that, is a rising star in the G.O.P.

He realizes that Fox News and Rush Limbaugh provide people who watch and listen to them exactly what they want; an endless stream of drama, in which they play the victim in their own pretentious and morally debased theater of the absurd.  However, that does not imply that just because the obscene can be monetized, that it should be given public disclosure.

But even if hate is what many want to hear, that doesn’t excuse those who pander to that desire. They should be shunned by all decent people.

This tragedy, isn't about limiting free speech.  This is about dangerously ignorant people, pursuing an ideology that demands the liquidation and elimination of all opponents and persons, who do not faithfully adhere their warped and deranged version of reality.  Krugman summarizes the critical conceit in this whole sordid affair.

It’s important to be clear here about the nature of our sickness. It’s not a general lack of “civility,” the favorite term of pundits who want to wish away fundamental policy disagreements. Politeness may be a virtue, but there’s a big difference between bad manners and calls, explicit or implicit, for violence; insults aren’t the same as incitement.

If there are those who do not believe the above, then they should ask what countries and explicitly, what Western democracies, allow their media and politicians to engage in such lawless behavior? The answer is that no Western European nations nor countries like Australia, Canada, or New Zealand, would tolerate the type of incitements to public violence as what routinely occurs in America.  On the other hand, third world countries with limited experience in democracy, failed nations engaging in sectarian conflict and ethnic cleansing, and countries like Venezuela and Iran, which are subsumed in managing their population through class and ideological warfare, are the ones in which America's political landscape most resembles.

Galbraith on why the Democrats lost the Election

The original sin of Obama’s presidency was to assign economic policy to a closed circle of bank-friendly economists and Bush carryovers. Larry Summers. Timothy Geithner. Ben Bernanke. These men had no personal commitment to the goal of an early recovery, no stake in the Democratic Party, no interest in the larger success of Barack Obama. Their primary goal, instead, was and remains to protect their own past decisions and their own professional futures.

James K. Galbraith, professor of economics, offers his summation on why the Obama administration and the Democrats in congress, failed to obtain better results in last week's election.

A few commentators, like Kevin Drum over at MotherJones.com, do not believe that even if Obama had pursued a strategy where the economy was this Administration's central objective, that the Democrats would be substantially better off.  Given the people who Obama sought consul from, it seems entirely correct to me that the Democrats would still have lost the house of representatives to the Republicans with such a strategy.  

As a corollary to Drum et al's sentiment, Galbraith elaborates in his opinion piece that Obama upon entering office had a limited understanding of economics, and coupled with a desire to pursue a centrist-right policy that maintained the status quo as much as possible, through the appointment of Clinton leftovers and Wall Street yes-men,  he essentially abdicated the mantel of being an agent of change and became an enabler of of Wall Street's mismanagement.

The obvious conclusion is that if Obama had pursued, as soon as he arrived in office, a bank nationalization program or something more similar to what the British engaged in and what the Swedes did in the early 1990's, he would have been able to dismantle the banking-congressional lobbyist nexus and create national banks capable of effectively lending money to both businesses and the American public a short time after.  Make no doubt that the process would have been bloody, but through inflicting maximum pain on the management and shareholders of the corrupt banks and insurance companies -something that was universally desired by the American public- Obama would have consolidated his record of being a giant-killer and a vanguard for the "little guy."

Instead, the timid and frustratingly feeble performance of Mr. Obama and his pro-business acolytes in the White House, have left his administration and the Democrats vulnerable to attacks from multiple fronts and potentially dead in the water for the next two years.

Quote of the Day: On Pat Tillman's Death

The one thing that’s definitely true is there’s certainly a cover-up. I mean, I wouldn’t speak on whether they had some CIA operative waiting in a bush to shoot his ass … I think it’s criminal for sure.

- Richard Tillman, brother of killed soldier Pat Tillman, about his brother’s death. Real Time with Bill Maher

I too have written my opinion of Pat Tillman's death and of the documentary movie that came out last month in cinemas across North America. It should be the duty and moral obligation of every American to understand who Pat Tillman was and under what circumstances he died.  None should ignore his death or that of many other soldiers, during the Bush years, who enlisted to serve their nation, but were used as political pawns in the geo-political machinations of the neo-conservatives and American military-industrial complex.

Quote of the Day: Sullivan on Obama

Andrew Sullivan is one of the few persons who has constantly and unequivocally condemned Republicans and Democrats, under the Bush junta and the Obama administration, of condoning and actively participating in the torture and murder of war on terrorism detainees.  In a blog entry that addresses the Machiavellian undercurrent to American politics, he condemns Mr. Obama for his recent cowardliness in preventing those who have been wrongly "extraordinary renditioned" and tortured by American forces to seek redress in court.

Aggressively trying to prevent torture victims from having their day in court merely using unclassified evidence is active complicity in the war crimes of the past. And such complicity is itself a war crime. Either we live under the rule of law and the Geneva Conventions, or we don't. And when Obama says we don't - as he unmistakably is - the precedent he is setting all but ensures that torture will come again, that there will never be consequences for it, and that the national security state can cloak itself in such a way that the citizenry has no way of penetrating its power. Bush and Cheney remain the real culprits here; but watching Obama essentially surrendering to their trap is a betrayal of a core rationale for his candidacy.

Nick Clegg, The Iraq Invasion was illegal!

During question period in the British House of Commons this week, Nick Clegg, the current Deputy Prime Minister of the UK coalition government, attacked the morally bankrupt and perennially dishonest Labour Party for its role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.  He lashed out at Jack Straw by proclaiming, "We may have to wait for his memoirs, but perhaps one day he will account for his role in the most disastrous decision of all: the illegal invasion of Iraq."

No one outside the coterie of miserable propagandists who sold the lies advocating for the invasion of Iraq consider the facts in dispute.  Kofi Annan, as Secretary-General of the United Nations, told the BBC in 2004 that the US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter.  The egregious falsehoods, exaggerations, and manufactured evidence posited by Tony Blair's Labour Party, Bush's bipartisan fraud-fest, and the usual suspects in the media and military-industrial complex now lie tattered and recognized for what it actually was.  The new UK coalition government, unlike the cowards in the Obama administration, have created an Iraq War inquiry to understand the details surrounding the decision to go to war.  Already, some startling details have been exposed.  For example, former MI-5 intel chief Baroness Manningham-Buller stated that "we regarded the threat, the direct threat from Iraq as low."

Tom Ricks summarizes on his Foreign Policy blog,

As for al Qaeda and Iraq, she said, "there was no credible intelligence to suggest that connection and that was the judgment, I might say, of the CIA. It was not a judgment that found favour with some parts of the American machine, as you have also heard evidence on, which is why Donald Rumsfeld started an intelligence unit in the Pentagon to seek an alternative judgment."

Furthermore, Baroness Manningham-Buller elaborated that the invasion of Iraq, instead of diminishing the overall risk and likelihood of terrorism on British soil, in fact exacerbated the threat from indigenous Muslim radicals.  The blowback of the 7/7 London transit system was not unexpected.  Most damning of all was her stated opinion that the intelligence on Iraq's threat was not "substantial enough" to justify the action.  Of course, much of this is old news.  Opponents and skeptics of the institutional claims have long been aware of Blair's dodgy dossier consisting of "sexed-up" warnings and memos disclosed by whistle-blowers describing how Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush had predetermined the outcome of invasion.

However, the above revelations were not what caught the attention of the press.  Rather, as the Guardian newspaper outlines, was that others considered Clegg's statement in parliament to be a 'gaffe' with the potential that Britain may face charges in some future International court.  The government, more interested in covering their collective asses, distanced themselves by saying that Clegg was expressing his "long-held view" about the Iraq conflict as leader of the Liberal-Democrats.  Downing Street further stated that the government would await the findings of the Chilcot inquiry prior to reaching a view on the war.  It's an odd statement, since Tony Blair's own attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, prior to the war explicitly said, "I remain of the view that the correct legal interpretation of [UN security council] resolution 1441 is that it does not authorise the use of military force without a further determination by the security council."

The Unbearable Greed of AIG

In Hannah Arendt's chronology of Adolf Eichmann's trial by the State of Israel for his crimes against the Jewish people during the Second World War, it was clear that Eichmann thought of himself as a victim of chance who was not  directly accountable for the horrendous criminality pursued by the Third Reich.  In a recent Washington Post article titled, "Transcript reveals anger of AIG employees toward politicians, public" one can observe the same dismisal of accountability and latent victimization conjured by AIG employees and the perpetrators of one of the greatest economic meltdowns in human civilization.

To contextualize, AIG (American International Group Inc.) prior to September 2008, as listed by Forbes magazine, was the 18th largest publicly owned corporation in the world.  The company had been the largest underwriter of commercial and industrial insurance in the USA.  Due to the company's involvement in the sale of credit protection in the form of credit default swaps (CDSs) on collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) and a swift downgrade in its credit-rating, precipitated by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, AIG suffered a liquidity crisis.  The American government driven by the perception that a global economic collapse would ensue if AIG failed, supplied the company with $180 billion in loans, stock investments and other commitments from the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department.

According to the WaPo, employees of AIG were less than enthusiastic of the public pillorying of  their beloved corporation in the months after the bailout.  Hannah Arendt explained that in bureaucracies there is a diffusion of responsibility due to the collective nature of the enterprise.  As a result, because most bureaucrats do not directly control the nature of how decisions are made, nor do they frequently control how those decisions are executed, these people do not accept personal responsibility for their contributions to what in the end are systematic failures of judgement and ethics.

Consider some of their statements:

One employee doing his best Adolf Eichmann imitation said, "I will stand behind every action I have taken in this company from Day One."

Another jackal of high-finance had this to say of the American public, the US government, and the corporate welfare that had saved his/her job, "To be honest with you, I really hope it blows up. I think the U.S. taxpayer deserves to lose a trillion dollars over this thing for the way they have behaved."

Upon hearing that NY State Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo was investigating AIG for distributing hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses to employees and was threatening to disclose the names of these individuals to the public, employees claimed that were being "blackmailed" and subject to "extortion."

The greed-heads shrieked that their windfalls were deserved and that the entire scapegoating process reeked of McCarthyism and "un-American" policies!

The reality is that these people will never accept that they are the one's responsible for the economic catastrophe that has befallen the entire planet.  In their mind it is the government's fault for allowing minorities to buy homes they could not afford.  It is never charlatans like themselves who are to blame for the greed and undisciplined excesses of their company.  It is someone else's fault, and as in the case of all narcissistic sociopaths, it is they who claim to be the real victims.

Keep hoping AIG and fiends, your dream of a global economic collapse may still happen.

Fear and Loathing in Washington DC

“He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat.”
- Napoleon Bonaparte

“Military glory--that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood--that serpent's eye, that charms to destroy..."
- Abraham Lincoln

In response to a drumhead to exact revenge of the killing of the four Blackwater mercenaries by the citizens of Fallujah, a political decision was made ordering US Marines to commence Operation Vigilant Resolve in April. The city of Fallujah was purged of its 70,000 citizens and American forces in the ensuing month long battle engaged in some of the heaviest urban combat of the war. It was reported that the rules of engagement were changed to allow US snipers to fire on unarmed civilians, including children, as well as firing on clearly marked ambulances in an attempt to inflict maximum damage on the recalcitrant and indigenous population. American casualties in April reached their highest peak with a total of 136 Americans dead, plus another 1214 declared wounded. The commander-in-chief had entered a battle his military officers had warned him not to pursue and it ended with him reversing orders, equally to the objections of his military chiefs of staff when the bodies started pilling up.

Domestically, the US economy was still faltering and deep concerns were emerging throughout the nation about the competency and re-electability of George W. Bush.

To ‘manufacture consent’ for their man in the White House, operatives within the federal government in the eighteen months preceding the 2004 presidential election, engaged in a remarkable campaign to instil both fear and terror into the American people. Tom Ridge, then Homeland Security Secretary, stated that he,

[was] never invited to sit in on National Security Council meetings; was "blindsided" by the FBI in morning Oval Office meetings because the agency withheld critical information from him; found his urgings to block Michael Brown from being named head of the emergency agency blamed for the Hurricane Katrina disaster ignored; and was pushed to raise the security alert on the eve of President Bush's re-election, something he saw as politically motivated and worth resigning over.

In a review of the 2004 election, Joshua Marshall in Time magazine (2006) reported that the terror warnings became synchronous with major societal and political events.

Warnings of terror attacks over the Christmas 2003 holidays, warnings over summer terror attacks at the 2004 political conventions, then a whole slew of warnings of terror attacks to disrupt the election itself. Even the timing of the alerts seemed to fall with odd regularity right on the heels of major political events. One of Department of Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge's terror warnings came two days after John Kerry picked John Edwards as his running mate; another came three days after the end of the Democratic convention.

The severity of this now confirmed internal policy only adds to the growing writ of crimes instituted by the Bush junta to manipulate and inject public fear for political advantages (the definition of terrorism). Apparently when swarthy unshaven foreigners engage in this behaviour a two trillion dollar war without end can be justified, but when public officials sworn to uphold the American constitution do otherwise, it’s a non-story.

When then Democratic Party presidential candidate Gov. Howard Dean (D-VT) questioned the timing of these terror alerts, not only was he attacked by Dick Cheney and Tom Ridge, but he was lambasted by his own party in the likes of that ‘ultimate loser’ John Kerry and the spineless glitterati of the punditry class, such as MSNBC’s Chris Matthews and Tucker Carlson.

Glenn Greenwald of Salon, says this of the Atlantic magazine’s Marc Ambinder,

[He] acknowledges that Bush critics were right that the terror alerts were being manipulated for political ends,... but still says journalists like himself were right to scorn such critics "because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence." As always: even when the dirty leftist hippies are proven right, they're still Shrill, unSerious Losers who every decent person and "journalist" scorns.

The corruption amongst the mainstream news media and both Democrats and Republicans is respectively beyond the scale of even Pravda and that of Latin Americian banana republics. Democracy in America (or the pretense of it) simply ceased to exist in any meaningful manner at this historic juncture.

The real price of liberty...

What I find more infuriating and repellent than the pusillanimous double-speak of the Mullahs and the truncheon waiving crudity of their paid henchmen, is the abysmal coverage of this transformative event by the Western media. On one hand you have the Legion of Jackals in the likes of Brit Hume of FOX news, who have declared that the Obama administration has a vested interest in perpetuating the Ahmedinejad presidency. Other like minded public management organizations in the MSM (Mainstream Media) have paid equally scant attention to the issues at hand and/or given their standard mealy-mouth prognosis of the subject.

The reasons are simple: when you begin to understand that there are millions of people who truly live under the boot of tyranny, who know very well that any sort of protest against their leaders may lead to beatings, torture, and even death, but are willing to stand, shout, and let the world know that these filthy despots cannot control them and they will fight for their liberty, then our own pathetic lives seem terribly vacuous.

People should then ask the simple question of themselves; how it is that students, middle aged businessmen, and housewives can frighten dictatorships, but yet we the sovereign, we the people who supposedly hold the power in our democracy, we who own the airwaves, roads, and public institutions are powerless to change the events in our lives? Why is it that so few of us will stand up to our own lecherous governments when they institute torture as a national policy, remove rights that have existed for centuries, record our every conversations, emails, and movement, and when despite overwhelming opinion propel us into the maw of perpetual war?

Kurtz stated the answer in Apocalypse Now, "They lie. They lie and we have to be merciful for those who lie, for those nabobs. I hate them. I do hate them."

We are always being lied to. We are always being distracted. We are always being fed industrially refined and research tested propaganda. To make things worst, the dimmest of the population when asked will begin kicking sand in everyone's faces over such incredibly irrelevant issues such as gay marriage, what level of taxation your estate will be subject to when you're dead, and should stem cells be legally considered as fully formed human beings. So when the subject of revolution does occur, when people naturally ask why are people dying for their freedom, we are asked and told to look away, because the sight may be of detriment to our own government.