Saturday, October 20, 2012

9/11/12 Ushers In Phase II Of Endless War On Terror

Children harmed by drone strikes, from "'Lesser-evil' politics demoralize and demobilize progressives: reviewing the failed strategy of the pragmatics" in Liberation News
So the CIA wants more drones, because terror is breaking out all over the place. But maybe the Pentagon will get them instead. So reports the servile Washington Post, with bland reference to death wishes:
"...bolster the agency’s ability to sustain its campaigns of lethal strikes in Pakistan and Yemen and enable it, if directed, to shift aircraft to emerging al-Qaeda threats in North Africa or other trouble spots, officials said."
When the names associated as "deciders" with these agencies change in merry-go-round fashion, with Panetta leaving the CIA to head up "defense" while Petraeus switches over from directing the Afghan war to heading up the CIA drone program, does it matter to the average struggling taxpayer which of these powerful, bloated weapon aggregators gets the next shipment of flying killer robots?

The justification for ramping up U.S. bombing of people all over this Earth is, conveniently, the so-called "war on terror." Anyone older than a high school kid remembers how it was launched post 9/11/01, and how not only a whole lot of military hardware got deployed, and people got killed and their lives ruined, but a whole lot of civil liberties supposedly sacrosanct to our form of government got erased, too. Habeus corpus and  the right to not have your phone conversations monitored without a warrant are two that spring to mind.

Democracy Now! coverage of the arrest of Green party candidates trying to enter the debates.
Now, 11 years down that road, how to characterize the binding with plastic of third party candidates for president and vice president Stein and Honkala when they tried to enter a debate held  at a university? FOR 8 HOURS!!!! I guess indefinite detention about covers it.

How is it that self-proclaimed liberals can still support a regime that does shit like that?

Because they are drinking the pap of manufactured news, on a daily basis. The outbreak of violent demonstrations at U.S. embassies thousands of miles apart (London to Indonesia, and a whole lot of places in between) which included the slaying of an actual ambassador and his staff who had mysteriously traveled to an unsecured "consulate" compound in Benghazi, away from the more secure embassy compound in the Libyan capital, is the new 9/11.

Call it 9/11/12. It's a violent and dangerous world. The president has no choice but to bomb people all over the place. It's to keep you safe.

So is giving drones to law enforcement agencies. Because they are so very good at keeping people safe!

How will the government pay for all of it? I did hear that the president announced that Social Security will get an overhaul if he gets re-elected. Maybe some of the money will come from there. Also from Medicare. And cuts to education, social services, and infrastructure repair.
The president and his Democratic allies say that Republicans have put at risk the nation’s defenses. | AP Photo
Just don't cut the weapons manufacturing industry! On that, the false dichotomy of Republicrats and Dempublicans agree.

Austerity, here we come.Infographic: Household Incomes Decline, Poverty Rates Flat - Share This!

1 comment:

chrisrushlau said...

CIA chiefs face arrest over horrific evidence of bloody 'video-game' sorties by drone pilots 20 Oct 2012 The Mail on Sunday today reveals shocking new evidence of the full horrific impact of US drone attacks in Pakistan. A damning dossier assembled from exhaustive research into the strikes' targets sets out in heartbreaking detail the deaths of teachers, students and Pakistani policemen. It also describes how bereaved relatives are forced to gather their loved ones' dismembered body parts in the aftermath of strikes. Filed in two separate court cases, it is set to trigger a formal murder investigation by police into the roles of two US officials said to have ordered the strikes. They are Jonathan Banks, former head of the Central Intelligence Agency's Islamabad station, and John A. Rizzo, the CIA's former chief lawyer.