Obama to Escalate Afghan War With A 20,000 Troop Surge

Well if you thought Obama was the guy to bring change to US foreign policy then I must say you were sadly mistaking or worse mislead. It seems every American president has got to get their war on, I guess to show the world that they're not to be fucked with. While the American presidents shows the world his bonafides you are going to have some non white people in some far off land being used as live battlefield targets for the US Military. The US Military Industrial Complex is a very powerful and influential business organization and Barack know not to cross the UMIC unless he want to end up like JFK.

From The Telegraph UK:

Barack Obama is preparing to send at least 20,000 more US soldiers into Afghanistan in a "surge" similar to the deployment that contributed to security improvements in Iraq.

:::

The President-Elect's intention to shift the focus of the fight against terrorism to Afghanistan has been bolstered by Robert Gates agreement to stay on as Defence Secretary.

Mr Gates is a strong believer in an Afghan surge, which would not only put thousands more boots on the ground but involve negotiations with malleable branches of the Taliban

:::

A spokesman said the final number was likely to be "well north of 20,000", and indicated that countries such as Britain already fighting in the south would not face strong US demands to provide more troops.

Defence department staff members are privately delighted Mr Obama has chosen to retain a popular boss in the interests of stability. Mr Gates is expected to be officially introduced as part of an experience and centrist national security team on Monday.

"The president-elect has already indicated that he wants to put additional troops in Afghanistan," said an official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Over the weekend Mr Obama reiterated that he wanted to begin drawing down the 146,000 US troops in Iraq as soon as he takes office, saying he wanted to "shore up efforts" in Afghanistan.

The economy is about to go bottom up, people are losing their homes and their jobs, there is no money for health care or college tuition but our govrnment always have money to wage wars. What a fucking shame.

Obama the hawk?

IS BARACK Obama to the right of George W. Bush on Israel-Palestine?

That was the question across the Arab and Muslim world following Obama's declaration of support for an "undivided" Jerusalem at the annual meeting of the main pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington.

As Obama said to a meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) on June 4:

Israel's security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable. The Palestinians need a state that is contiguous and cohesive, and that allows them to prosper. But any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel's identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders. Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided.

This hawkish statement contradicts official U.S. policy. Under the U.S.-brokered Oslo Accords of 1993 that launched an Israeli-Palestinian "peace process," the fate of Arab and mainly Muslim East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel since the 1967 Middle East war, is to be decided through "permanent status" negotiations between Israel and Palestinian leaders. Since then, the Palestinian Authority has insisted that East Jerusalem must be the capital of the Palestinian mini-state envisioned under the Oslo agreement.

By appeasing the Israeli--and U.S.--right wing with his comments on Jerusalem, Obama was signaling that his administration wouldn't change the course set by George Bush.

That means further construction of the apartheid wall in the West Bank to Palestinians into ghettos, more carve-ups of the West Bank to consolidate Israeli settlements on Palestinian lands, and continued support for the genocidal combination of sanctions and military strikes aimed at Gaza, one of the world's most densely populated areas.

This isn't speculation. Obama spelled it out for the AIPAC audience:

I will bring to the White House an unshakeable commitment to Israel's security. That starts with ensuring Israel's qualitative military advantage. I will ensure that Israel can defend itself from any threat--from Gaza to Tehran.

Defense cooperation between the United States and Israel is a model of success, and must be deepened. As president, I will implement a Memorandum of Understanding that provides $30 billion in assistance to Israel over the next decade--investments to Israel's security that will not be tied to any other nation.

Obama's blank check for Israel is part of a plan to ensure that the Middle East remains thoroughly militarized under U.S. domination, even if some U.S. troops are shifted out of Iraq.

The primary target is to be Iran, which Obama accused of accelerating a nuclear weapons program. "Keeping all of our troops tied down indefinitely in Iraq is not the way to weaken Iran--it is precisely what has strengthened it," he said. "It is a policy for staying, not a plan for victory. I have proposed a responsible, phased redeployment of our troops from Iraq. We will get out as carefully as we were careless getting in."

In other words, very, very slowly.

The U.S. certainly wouldn't pull back from the region under an Obama administration. "The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat," Obama said, echoing Hillary Clinton's notorious comment that the U.S. would "obliterate" Iran if it attacked Israel. He added: "Finally, let there be no doubt: I will always keep the threat of military action on the table to defend our security and our ally Israel. Sometimes, there are no alternatives to confrontation."

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

THAT'S A lot of saber-rattling from a man often billed as an "antiwar" candidate. Apologists for Obama claim that he "had" to throw out red meat to AIPAC in order to appease the Israel lobby and shore up Jewish votes for the November election.

But Obama didn't have to go nearly so far in order to curry favor with AIPAC. While Obama certainly wants to bury memories of his once-friendly relationship with people like Palestinian activist Ali Abunimah and Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi, he could have accomplished that by other means--as he showed in his disposal of Rev. Jeremiah Wright and his former church.

No, the explanation for Obama's hard-line stance lies elsewhere. He's running to become the leader of the world's most powerful and vicious imperial power, and he must demonstrate that--despite his past as a community organizer--he's sufficiently ruthless for the job. His audience isn't AIPAC, but the U.S. military-industrial complex.

Thus, Obama has staked out a right-wing stance not only on Israel, but against Cuba. As historian Greg Grandin pointed out, Obama recently met with right-wing Cubans in Miami and denounced Bush for neglecting Latin America and allowing "demagogues like Hugo Chávez" to step "into the vacuum."

"He even raised the specter of Iranian influence in the region, pointing out that 'just the other day, Tehran and Caracas launched a joint bank with their windfall oil profits,'" Grandin wrote.

Obama also made it clear that he would continue the U.S. policy of building up Colombia's right-wing government as a militaristic agent of the U.S. in the region. He pledged to "support Colombia's right to strike terrorists who seek safe havens across its borders," endorsing Colombia's deadly attack on rebels in Ecuador's territory in March, an action that was condemned by virtually all Latin American governments.

So much for "change." If elected, Obama may try to downsize and repackage the U.S. occupation of Iraq. But when it comes to aggressively pursuing U.S. imperial interests, there'll be no retreat unless resistance at home and abroad compels it.

Source

Endless war for endless profit

From Unknownnews.com
Our current set of wars don't make sense, largely because they are not wars in the normal sense. They are actually just gigantic business opportunities.

The so-called news about these wars is not news, it is carefully designed advertising for the businesses involved in the so called war-making.

The soldiers are not really soldiers, they are paid extras on a movie set where the advertising occurs.

Consequently, nothing that is not productive of profits receives any significant attention, beyond what is necessary to maintain the pretense that a real war is actually occurring. International law and rules of war have the same relation to these wars as a novel that is adapted to the screen.

Patriotic pretense is elevated over patriotic feeling. Wounded soldiers are not honored as heroes, they are just shuffled off the set like used and damaged props, abandoned and ignored as avoid-
able costs that threaten profits. Strategic military goals become meaningless as the overriding strategic goal is to keep the profit making business going.

Victory, in this setting, is the last thing desired, as it would mean an end to the flow of profit. Defeat and retreat, likewise, are unthinkable for the same reason. The business plan is endless war for endless profit.

Anything in these so-called wars that enhances profit or furthers the career goals of the major players is good. Anything that threatens profit or the anticipated lucrative careers of the military, industrial and congressional leaders is bad.

These wars, as they are being conducted, are best understood as a self-contained horizontally and vertically integrated industry, for whom the nation is merely a befuddled customer.

Western Civilization Lacks Morality

From Rense.com:

"The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction." --Five Western military leaders.

I read the statement three times trying to figure out the typo. Then it hit me, the West has now out-Orwelled Orwell: The West must nuke other countries in order to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction! In Westernspeak, the West nuking other countries does not qualify as the use of weapons of mass destruction.

The astounding statement comes from a paper prepared for a NATO summit in April by five top military leaders ­ an American, a German, a Dutchman, a Frenchman, and a Brit.

The paper, prepared by men regarded as distinguished leaders and not as escapees from insane asylums, argues that "the West's values and way of life are under threat, but the West is struggling to summon the will to defend them." The leaders find that the UN is in the way of the West's will, as is the European Union which is obstructing NATO and "NATO's credibility is at stake in Afghanistan."

And that's a serious matter. If NATO loses its credibility in Afghanistan, Western civilization will collapse just like the Soviet Union. The West just doesn't realize how weak it is. To strengthen itself, it needs to drop more and larger bombs.

The German military leader blames the Merkel government for contributing to the West's inability to defend its values by standing in the way of a revival of German militarism. How can Germany be "a reliable partner" for America, he asks, if the German government insists on "special rules" limiting the combat use of its forces in Afghanistan?

Ron Asmus, head of the German Marshall Fund and a former US State Department official, welcomed the paper as "a wake-up call." Asmus means a call to wake-up to the threats from the brutal world, not to the lunacy of Western leaders.

Who, what is threatening the West's values and way of life? Political fanaticism, religious fundamentalism, and the imminent spread of nuclear weapons, answer the five asylum escapees.

By political fanaticism, do they mean the neoconservatives who believe that the future of humanity depends on the US establishing its hegemony over the world? By religious fundamentalism, do they mean "rapture evangelicals" agitating for Armageddon or Christian and Israeli Zionists demanding a nuclear attack on Iran? By spread of nuclear weapons, do they mean Israel's undeclared and illegal possession of several hundred nuclear weapons?

No. The paranoid military leaders see all the fanaticism, religious and otherwise, and all the threats to humanity as residing outside Western civilization (Israel is inside). The "increasingly brutal world," of which the leaders warn, is "over there." Only Muslims are fanatics. All us white guys are rational and sane.

There is nothing brutal about the US/NATO bombing of Serbia, Iraq, and Afghanistan, or the Israeli bombing of Lebanon, or the Israeli ethnic cleansing of the West Bank, or the genocide Israel hopes to commit against Palestinians in Gaza.

All of this, as well as America's bombing of Somalia, America's torture dungeons, show trials of "detainees," and overthrow of elected governments and installation of puppet rulers, is the West's necessary response to keep the brutal world at bay.

Brutal things happen in the "brutal world" and are entirely the fault of those in the brutal world. None of this would happen if the inhabitants of the brutal world would just do as they are told. How can the civilized world with its monopoly on morality allow people in the brutal world to behave independently? I mean, really! God forbid, they might attack some innocent country.

The "brutal world" consists of those immoral fanatics who object to being marginalized by the West and who reply to mass bombings from the air and to the death and destruction inflicted on them through myriad ways by strapping on a suicide bomb.

Unable to impose its will on countries it has invaded with conventional arms, the West's military leaders are now prepared to force compliance with the moral world's will by threatening to nuke those who resist. You see, since the West has the monopoly on morality, truth, and justice, those in the outside world are obviously evil, wicked and brutal. Therefore, as President Bush tells us, it is a simple choice between good and evil, and there's no better candidate than evil for being nuked. The sooner we can get rid of the brutal world, the sooner we will have "freedom and democracy" everywhere that's left.

Meanwhile, the United States, the great moral light unto the world, has just prevented the United Nations from censuring Israel, the world's other great moral light, for cutting off food supplies, medical supplies, and electric power to Gaza. You see, Gaza is in the outside world and is a home of the bad guys. Moreover, the wicked Palestinians there tricked the US when the US allowed them to hold a free election. Instead of electing the US candidate, the wicked voters elected a government that would represent them. The US and Israel overturned the Palestinian election in the West Bank, but those in Gaza clung to the government that they had elected. Now they are going to suffer and die until they elect the government that the US and Israel wants. I mean, how can we expect people in the brutal world to know what's best for them?

The fact that the UN tried to stop Israel's just punishment of the Gazans shows how right the five leaders' report is about the UN being a threat to Western values and way of life. The UN is really against us. This puts the UN in the outside world and makes it a candidate for being nuked if not an outright terrorist organization. As our president said, "you are with us or against us."

The US and Israel need a puppet government in Palestine so that a ghettoized remnant of Palestine can be turned into a "two state solution." The two states will be Israel incorporating the stolen West Bank and a Palestinian ghetto without an economy, water, or contiguous borders.

This is necessary in order to protect Israel from the brutal outside world.

Inhabitants of the brutal world are confused about the "self- determination" advocated by Western leaders. It doesn't mean that those outside Western civilization and Israel should decide for themselves. "Self" means American. The term, so familiar to us, means "American-determination." The US determines and others obey.

It is the brutal world that causes all the trouble by not obeying

Ol' Crazy McCain says we should occupy Iraq for a 100 years

Republican Presidential hopeful John McCain along with his war mongering, neocon buddy Joe Lieberman at a campaign event in New Hampshire. What I would like to tell old man McCain is if you want to be in Iraq for a hundred years, go to Iraq, get citizenship and move the hell over there. You can stay as long as you want. Oh yeah and take Lieberman and the rest of the cowardly neocons with you. Good Riddance!!!!

Man these old white guys is something else. They actually think that they have the god giving right to just take over someones country and just stay there as long as they want regardless of what the occupied people want. Those arrogant assholes need to be chased out of Washington.

Top Ten Signs Your Country May Be Going Fascist

********************************************************************************

Americans better wake up and keep a close eye on the elites who are running this country. Don't get sidetracked by the corporate media and all of the nonsensical television programs they have you loosing your mind over, I know American Idol new season starts next year but we also have a very important presidential election next year. Do your civic duty and vote for the candidate that represents your interest the most. A candidate that's anti-fascist, anti-imperialist and anti-war is what I'm looking for.

George Bush Sr. May Face Charges: Conspiring to Kidnap and Murder Political Activists

Former military dictator Jorge Rafael Videla and 16 other military leaders in Argentina will be prosecuted on charges of conspiring to kidnap and kill political activists in a scheme known as Plan Condor, developed by Henry Kissinger and George Bush Sr., head of the CIA at the time. Dictators in Uruguay, Chile, Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina killed opponents in the 1970s and 80s under the plan, also known as Operation Condor. The United States and Latin American military governments developed Operation Condor as a a transnational, state-sponsored terrorist coalition among the militaries of South America. In Argentina alone some 30,000 people were disappeared as result, leaving loved ones to seek justice decades later.

Coordinating Terror with U.S. support

Plan Condor began with the U.S. supported military coup against Chile's democratically elected socialist president, Salvador Allende. Allende's government was targeted as a threat to U.S. strategic policy in Latin America early on. White House tapes reveal that on Sept. 14, 1970, then-President Richard Nixon ordered measures to force the Chilean economy into bankruptcy. "The U.S. will not accept a Marxist government just because of the irresponsibility of the Chilean people," declared Henry Kissinger, Nixon´s secretary of State.

Declassified U.S. Department of State documents have provided evidence to Plan Condor's broad scope. The Operation was an ambitious and successful plan to coordinate repression internationally. FBI special agent intelligence liason to the Southern Cone countries Robert Scherrer (now deceased) sent the letter to the U.S. embassy in Argentina on September 28, 1976: "'Operation Condor' is the code name for the collection, exchange and storage of intelligence data concerning so-called 'leftists,' communists and Marxists, which was recently established between cooperating intelligence services in South America in order to eliminate Marxist terrorist activities in the area."

The memo also specified Argentina's enthusiasm over the plan. "Members of 'Operation Condor' showing the most enthusiasm to date have been Argentina, Uruguay and Chile. The latter three countries have engaged in joint operations, primarily in Argentina, against the terrorist target." Operation Condor has been difficult to investigate, due to the selectivity of victims and lack of official declassified documents from the CIA and Department of State. Many of the documents that have been released have been heavily censored. However, following an extensive investigation by Argentine courts beginning in 1999 and the decade long work of human rights groups to collect forensic evidence, 17 military leaders will be put on trial for their participation in the illegal persecution of social activists.

*********

Source