Playing out the long wars…

Nablus, West Bank: ultra-orthodox Jewish men pray at Joseph’s Tomb [Sebastian Scheiner/AP]

Just one representative article… I mean why load up? We are swimming in it… the war debris, the porn, the horror… so I pop this up as I listen to a Charlie Rose show, selling ALL the wars, Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran… (well they did leave out Africom!)

Kilcullen (who, it appears, has greatly modified his earlier strong position against drones), General Barno (big bud of McChrystal) and Ricks.. who basically loves the wars, loves his prizes for his books and shoulder-to-shoulder-with-the-war “reporting”… the longer the wars run, the more money and prizes.   I don’t see that we will ever get free… a perfect storm of bleeding the nation dry for the foreign wars.  But! grow your own vegetables and save water!  (Nothing wrong with either, either!)

Compost or be fined (new, unenforceable rule in San Francisco for private residences).

Meanwhile the tanks roll out, the bombs will fall, the cradle will rock, the world over.

[N]ow again we have the leadership of both political parties with much of the journalistic establishment in tow promoting what will likely be exposed in the near term as another slough of lies, this time about Iran. At the center of them is this: Iran has a nuclear weapons program threatening Israel with nuclear holocaust.

That’s a staggering allegation, and designed to be so. It’s the son of the earlier allegation born of the White House Iraq Group propaganda team: Let’s not let the “smoking gun” be a mushroom cloud over New York City. Sheer fear-mongering.

Iraq didn’t threaten New York. The U.S. threatened, invaded and occupied Iraq, slaughtering at least tens of thousands in the process. And Iran does not threaten anyone with a nuclear weapon. It should be repeated again and again: the National Intelligence Estimate concerning the question of Iran’s nuclear program, representing the consensus of the 16 different U.S. intelligence agencies in 2007 concluded in “high confidence” that Iran does not even have an active nuclear weapons program. (The report appeared after nearly a year’s delay due to apparent obstruction by Dick Cheney’s office, the neocon headquarters).

Unfortunately, regime change in Iran is the single most urgent, outstanding item on the neocon agenda left unfulfilled after eight years of Bush-era empowerment. Its proponents refuse to allow a mere change of administrations to deflect them from their goal. Hence somehow a neocon has insinuated himself into the center of Iran policy, first as a Hillary Clinton advisor and “diplomat,” and now as an advisor to the president working for the National Security Agency.

Dennis Ross is an NIE-denier. With no real expertise on Iran or Persian linguistic competence, and no understanding of nuclear science—but lots of experience in U.S.-Israeli relations and settler advocacy garnering him the nickname “Israel’s lawyer”—Ross was principal author of an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal eight months after the NIE appeared. snip

We seem utterly obsessed with massive, ritual bloodletting. Death.

Ross’s change of jobs was announced in the midst of the street demonstrations following the contested election results in Iran last week. He will now literally move into the White House and provide day to day counsel to Obama on how to “deal” with a leadership he wants to topple.

I suppose we can pray that Obama is a stalwart fellow. They call him nuanced.  They hold it out like it fucking matters.  So…this is good right?  I mean, intrinsically.. this is good… yes?  😆

Yes, prayer is good.  Pray.  And pray again… be nuanced in your prayers… be so resolute in your prayers that you do not notice the bombs falling, the starvation, the displacement, the refugees, the death and dismemberment.

Yes, do pray.

[S]ensationalistically entitled “Everybody Needs to Worry about Iran,” it alluded blithely, offering no evidence, to the Iranian regime’s drive to become “a nuclear state” and announced a drive to “mobilize the power of a united American public in opposition.”

Co-signators included Richard Holbrooke, currently Obama’s special envoy to “Af-Pak;” former CIA director and Project for a New American Century operative James R. Woolsey and Mark D. Wallace, a former UN ambassador who heads up with Woolsey and others something called “United Against a Nuclear Iran.” (All were major proponents of the Iraq War.) …

Such nuanced change I am blinded by the brilliance.

Gaza City: Mahmoud Al Segali, 9, works as a mechanic assistant at the Arayshi garage [Ali Ali/EPA]

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UPDATE, 2:51 am on the Pacific Ocean

oh… this just fits in too well here…

The domestic long wars…

[O]nce Weill got the radical deregulation law he wanted, he issued a statement giving credit:

“In particular, we congratulate President Clinton, Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, NEC [National Economic Council] Chairman Gene Sperling, Under Secretary of the Treasury Gary Gensler, Assistant Treasury Secretaries Linda Robertson and Greg Baer.”

Summers is now Obama’s top economic adviser, Sperling has been appointed legal counselor at Treasury, and Gensler, a former partner in Goldman Sachs, is head of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which he once attempted to prevent from regulating derivatives when it was run by Brooksley Born. Robertson worked for Summers in pushing through the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which freed the derivatives market from adult supervision and contained the “Enron Loophole,” permitting that company to go wild. Robertson then became the top Washington lobbyist for Enron and was recently appointed senior adviser to Fed Chair Ben S. Bernanke. Baer went to work as a corporate counsel for Bank of America, which announced his appointment with a press release crediting him with having “coordinated Treasury policy” during the Clinton years in getting Glass-Steagall repealed. As a result of deregulation, B of A too spiraled out of control and ended up as a beneficiary of the Treasury’s welfare program.

Why was I so naive as to have expected this Democratic president to not do the bidding of the banks when the last president from that party joined the Republicans in giving the moguls everything they wanted? Please, Obama, prove me wrong.

I’d suggest Bob let his fingers do the walking, look up the financial services, banks and Wall St contributions to OBAMA. I am sure he knows all of that perfectly well. He should stop bleating and get used to using Obama’s name. He’s in charge, remember?

Everything now is geared to raking in a lot more $$$$ than in the 2007 – 2008 cycle… There is talk already that the administration wants a “Reagan-like” blow out in 2012.

Let’s not beat around the Bush. Or around the Obama.
The left, so called, plays this every election. To me it proves, whether voluntary or not, we have a completely closed political system.

They bitch and moan and then, when given the chance, they sell the next Democratic White or Black or Brown [false] hope.. it never ceases.