Growing up with bigotry, seems to help me see it when it surfaces, I see it.

Just part of the saturation mind control via marketing and manipulation of natural human tendencies. Human psychology has been used for such purposes since 1914. And yes the majority will be happy if things mostly stay the same and they can have their wants met. Only a very small % will fight and of course by then it will be too late to use our Constitutional weapons against it. Just rag-tag “wild eyed” “anti-Christians” in the mountains fighting a losing battle. If it goes that far. Such long term planning and covering all the bases make their bet far more sound than our own to keep our Republic.

Dictatorships work better for them within the USA as well and it is only a matter of time that the crumbling Republic is to collapse (as they engineered) and only the Dominionists waiting in the wings to save us from neo-barbarism that will occur unless a “strong leadership and order” are brought to us. Considering the options between “The Road” and “The Handmaid’s Tale” people will choose the latter as a lesser of two evils. Something they have been doing for years in our hoaxed up elections. They decide before we get to choose. That is a farce not real elections. Remember the choices in the USSR? Similar only more sophisticated and subtle.

First things first, Fisky: we’ve simply got to take up a collection.

Let all sensible Americans assemble a pot of gold and send Alan Keyes and John Voight off on such a glorious honeymoon that these two lunatics decide to throw in the towel and never come back.

No John, don’t ever come home again. Proceed directly to the front lines in Afghanistan and sacrifice yourself on one or another altar of absurdity. Your husband could easily top that and go on to immolate himself in Saigon while Malcom Browne trips the light fantastic - another 35 mm. appointment with destiny.

General McChrystal can then see to it that you both get a posthumous Silver Star!

johannes, November 8 at 11:39 am

Yes indeed, very funny!

The biggest money making part of the state Israel is established in the USA.

They can do much more dealing and wealing as other countrys, under the cloak of the Hollocaust, most countrys accept some not to kosher dealings.

I had an ount who thout that Jodelen ( yodel)wash Jewes (joden) singing, well maby funny ?

Mary Ann McNeely, November 8 at 4:23 am

“This is true.  And that makes Obama a criminal, walking in the blood-filled boots of LBJ, Dickybird Nixon, Ronald Ray-Gun, George Herbert Worthless Bush, Bill Clinton and George Worthless Bush.  He is no better than any of the previously mentioned mass killers and political guttersnipes”.

The above list is really an indictment of the Boomer generation really.  It has been over 40 years since their idealism and activism helped (sort of) to end the Vietnam war and bring lasting peace to the world. 

I wonder what happened to them?  Must have grown up and got jobs on Wall Street.  Too bad really, they showed such promise.

Mary Ann McNeely, don’t forget about fellow Nobel
prostitute (er liarite, er I mean laureate) Woodrow
Wilson. He gave us the wonderful Federal Reserve Act as
a yummy appetizer to the useless slaughter of WWI. It’s
getting a lot harder to start a bogus war these
days…let’s hope so anyway!

By Folktruther, November 7 at 12:41 am #

Yes, but Obama wants to postpone the disaster until after the next presidential election.  At the cost of enormous blood and money.

This is true.  And that makes Obama a criminal, walking in the blood-filled boots of LBJ, Dickybird Nixon, Ronald Ray-Gun, George Herbert Worthless Bush, Bill Clinton and George Worthless Bush.  He is no better than any of the previously mentioned mass killers and political guttersnipes.

Yeah Zing…I won’t clutter the thread with more
lyrics, but google “Ball of Confusion” (Temptations
1970)...disturbingly if not poignantly current…btw.
the Love and Rockets cover version of it is simply the
best!

two, one two three four

Ev’rybody’s talking about
Bagism, Madism, Dragism, Shagism, Ragism, Tagism
This-ism, that-ism
ism ism ism
All we are saying is give peace a chance
All we are saying is give peace a chance

its goin’ great

Everybody’s talkin’ bout’ministers,
sinisters, banisters and canisters,
bishops and fishops and rabbis and pop eyes,
and byebye, byebyes

all we are saying is give peace a chance,
all we are saying is give peace a chance,

let me tell you now
Ev’rybody’s talking about
Revolution, evolution, masturbation,
flagellation, regulation, integrations,
meditations, United Nations,
Congratulations.
All we are saying [keep talking] is give peace a chance
All we are saying is give peace a chance

Oh Let’s stick to it
Ev’rybody’s talking about
John and Yoko, Timmy Leary, Rosemary, Tommy smothers, Bobby Dylan,
Tommy Cooper, Derek Tayor, Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Hare Krishna,
Hare Hare Krishna
All we are saying is give peace a chance
All we are saying is give peace a chance

—John Lennon

Not only does America performs its familiar role of propping up dictators such as Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, the two kings Abdullah of Jordan and Saudi Arabia and lately Karzai, who along with his brother are known CIA agents, but also America is supporting occupation and militarism in the three countries of Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan, all of which are majority Muslim countries. And then they keep asking the ever stupid question: Why the people of these countries hate official political-military America so much?!

And the continuing perplexing question is: “How, supposedly in the most bragged about democracy in the world, the taxpayers masses are so sheepish to the point that they are doing practically nothing to change the abuses of their successive governments?

Spending 13 months in Vietnam, I remember very well the
folly of the whole mess. Hindsight, I should have moved
to Canada or requested a rich daddy.

Propping up hand puppet governments seems business as
usual, reason has little bearing on why this is done,
except the normal greed and opportunism, maybe spoils of
riches, not much different here, than bandits or pirates
taking what they wants.

Fraud used in the naming of puppet governments, seems
hypocritical as the same word could be used to describe
our own alleged representative government, in the
loosely defined meaning of Democracy.

It seems as the hand picked puppets get kicked out by
their own people, or by the US governments souring
towards their own puppets over time, the cycle is
repeated again and again, says much about learning
experiences, supposedly it is working as planned?

OMG I found agreement with something montanawildhack noted…Israel accounts for 10% of the worlds export trade in weapons…...Though it is far from their number one product….

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Israel

I’m not going to disagree about the fraudulence of the Afghan election, but i think Fisk is being a little over-the-top and leaving out some important bits of this story.

First, Abdullah Abdullah is no saint; he just wasn’t able to stuff as many ballot boxes as Karzai. Second, the Pashtuns would be even less likely to accept Abdullah since he’s always affiliated with his Tajik heritage more than his Pashtun heritage. Third, the real legitimacy problem of this election was not the fraud but the dismally low turn out.

The last suggests that most Afghans decided that the election didn’t matter. Remember that five years ago Afghanistan held an impressive election.

And if the problem is that the Afghan government is ineffective, we might want to look at Western development of Afghan governance since the Taliban was ousted. There has never been an actual reconstruction plan, and the majority of funds have been cycled back into Western consultancies and contractors. Yet the West, even the normally against-the-grain Fisk, is ready to place the blame on the Afghans for our own failures.

I think that this fiasco will help Karzai, because he can play it as a break with Washington. It’s our presence and machinations that are the real illegitimate power structure in Afghanistan. And don’t forget that it’s your tax dollars funding the warlords who make it impossible for a strong central government to take charge in Afghanistan.

Typically, these pol blogs are fun because so few understand the real underpinnings of their lives. Americans haven’t a clue about our real policy on “democracy” and history is simply idiosyncratic. As Lakoff teaches us, consciousness is a relative thing. Yet a visit to the once honest Robert Scheer, and you find all sorts of savvy.  After all, Fisk is an acquired taste for most of the unconscious.  Robert should know that if you diss Obama-lot, consider what you might get in return.  I doubt the rascals following Mr. Fisk would be any more hopeful with Sarah Palin and Co. in power.  Now, Bob, give us something we can use.

grumpynyker,,

In answer to your query, “What does Israel produce for the greater good of the Earth?”

I believe that Israel’s #1 export is arms… And I also believe many of those arms are given to Israel by the United States and they in turn sell them for a quick profit…  Hey ya gotta make a living…

Karzai

Prop up the dick
‘War is peace’.
Please let that stick
flagitious and fly
It’s fall, so flame the Fisk guy
not not to be cruel,
but to ban brutal
from the lip’s of the first world
who forget their nest is propped up
by heaps of lost creeps, as they sup.

One could just accept the idea that we are simply stupid and cannot remember even recent history.  But the pending failure in Afghanistan is just too obvious to be a matter of ignorance and stupidity.  There is a constant here, which is that the ruling corporate elites will always prefer continual skirmishes to a revolutionary change in the world order.  We will continue to send young soldiers and foreign civilians to their deaths, justified by any and all imaginable excuses, so our brainwashed lives as we know them can go on.
After reading the other Truthdig posted article on Honduras, it is obvious that Afghanistan is just one of many battles being fought to maintain the current order.  Have you noticed how we are also carefully legitimizing the right-wing coup in Honduras by supporting the upcoming election of a pro-U.S. candidate?  The exact same projection of U.S. power is at play in Honduras.  There, President Zelaya had the audacity to raise the minimum wage that our multinationals and local businesses owned by our lackies must pay workers.  Zelaya had the further audacity to show political independence by aligning himself with Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and Bolivia.  Unable to topple the leaders of the latter countries because of their solid local support, the U.S. found willing local Honduran thugs to topple Zelaya and, thereby, send a message to the rest.  After making the standard “objections” to the military coup, Obama, Clinton, and other State Dept. officials worked hard to stonewall attempts to return Zelaya to power.  Now the U.S. claims it will support the new election, which does not have any Zelaya allies participating.  After this sham, we will of course claim that democracy prevailed, and our corporations can get on with their usual rape of Honduras.  Our intelligence organizations and military can now continue seeking ways to topple the other rougue leaders who dare to challenge U.S. hegemony and corporate dominance.

My own, libertarian view—

Does anyone anymore seriously doubt that we are ruled by a single party? Did some people really vote democratic on the theory that Obama would be a peace candidate?

Folks, we have a one-party system: the War Party. It has two wings: the Democratic War Party and the Republican War Party. Both support constant war. Republicans say we should focus on Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Democrats say the same thing, in reverse order.

My, what a difference.

I suggest we rename the Demopublican Party the “Lucy Van Pelt” party, in honor of the Peanuts character who, over the course of forty years, pulled the football away from a credulous Charlie Brown.

We’re Charlie Brown. Every year, we think this is the time the Lucy Van Pelt Party is actually going to stop the constant warfare. Every year, they pull away the football.

Without broadening the scope of this article to include conspiracy theory as does FRTothus, November 7 at 1:24 am # , an unnecessary complication, in my opinion, I would venture a thought.

Was it not George Santayana who noted ,“Those who fail to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it”? The installation of puppet govts whether to create a favorable climate for investment, or to seek a more favorable political climate within that nation, or to create a buffer against a perceived enemy always ends badly.

Sometimes, as in Guatemala, the puppet remains in place decades later, wreaking havoc upon the basic rights of the people of that nation. Sometimes the people rise up and defeat said puppet, as in Vietnam, a nation artificially divided for political and colonial reasons, thus ripe for such rebellion.

In any case we pride ourselves on our democracy yet continually and thoughtlessly deny such to others. We are the terrorists.

Hey good people of Afghanistan and Iraq I’ve got a quote from George Orwell you might enjoy:

“If you want to picture the future imagine a boot stamping on a human face….Forever.”

In short, keep fighting the Americans and never believe a word they say…  I’d offer you proof of what I say by letting you speak with some of the indigenous peoples around here but they’re all dead…....

You are quite right, DieDaily, about the Orwellian Bith Truth of the Iran Stolen Election, which appears to have been a landslide as the Iranis said it was.  The Iran Stolen Election ranks right up there with Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destructun and the Darfur Genicide as Big Truths about Muslim oil states.

PEACE NOW!  ... OR NO SECOND TERM!

Screw Obama if he thinks he’s getting re-elected after years of more war.  A strong, independent peace candidate that takes votes from the pro-war, pro-torture Democrats will be certain to sink his re-election chances.

And, we should be plotting how to send as many Democrats as home in 2010 by the same strategy of putting strong independent peace candidates in those elections to take away the votes they need to win.  Maybe we can’t win the seats for ourselves, but we can dang sure make sure the Democrats know they need us.

The Democrats need to learn that an active left can destroy any of their campaigns when they piss us off.  We need to make the Democrats afraid of us. Since they laugh at us now, that means we need to be plotting how to actively hurt the Democrats.

PEACE NOW!  ... OR NO SECOND TERM!

In true Fisk form, this is really an article about
Iran masquerading as one about Afghanistan. The
subtext on Iran is very misleading, implying that
there was a rigged election (with not a scrap of
evidence whatsoever, now or previously) and
neglecting to mention that it was actually the US-
funding and covert organization of the “Death-to-
China, Death-to-Russia Long-live-Globalism Greens”
party which constituted a tempering with the Iranian
election process…on the part of the US. Fisk is
very well aware of the fact that WE installed Karzai,
that WE are involved in the drug producing, trading
and money laundering emanating from the region, and
that Karzai has done not one thing in respect of
these issues without our covert knowledge and
encouragement. He sure talks a good game though.
Always remember that he owes his allegiance to the
London Intelligence complex and would ultimately like
to see the US thoroughly wrecked.

How may American bodies is this clown worth, Mr. Obama?

While I applaud the honorable Mr Fisk’s work, and his untiring pursuit of objective truth, his revealing of the often stunning but always cynical hypocrisy of the State, I believe, with great respect to Mr Fisk, that some key statements in this article demonstrate a fundamental misunderstanding of US policy, confusing a nation’s population with the State, and making the serious error of taking the State at its word.  The assumption that nations follow policies contrary to their interests confuses a nation as defined by its population and a nation’s policies as determined by a ruling elite.  As regards Vietnam, the narrative that the United States lost the war, and that the United States was fighting communism are neither one of them true.  The US won the war in Vietnam, but understanding this requires that we understand what the real goals were, as opposed to those officially stated.  Vietnam posed no military threat, nor did it pose an economic threat to the West in general or to the US in particular.  Vietnam’s threat was that of a good example, wherein a dirt-poor, “backward” nation had the audacity to want independence from not only France, but from the US as well, which had repeatedly rebuffed the very popular Ho Chi Minh and the Nationalist (not Communist, except in the doctrinal sense) movement to unify the country.  (Finding itself under US attack, Vietnam could hardly request help from the US for defense, and was duly condemned by the US for seeking defensive arms elsewhere, ie, the USSR.)  Had Vietnam been successful, the demonstration effect among other small nations who likewise seek independence from the super-power (no matter what flag they fly) would be disastrous (which is why Cuba and Venezuela are threats, as well). So Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos had to be destroyed, democracy crushed, and the Third World nations everywhere thus taught a concrete lesson on power. It is worthwhile to note that the US allies in Southeast Asia were democratic in name only. The US’s primary ally and base in the region, Thailand, was in reality a US-backed military dictatorship. The US, as represented not by the thousands of Americans who were sent to their deaths, but by the major corporations and banks that profit from every war (who, of course, consider themselves to be the “real” America), achieved practically all of their goals.  The corporate profits were quite handsome.  Public funds were poured into for-profit companies to develop better ways to kill.  Billions were borrowed from the banks at interest, more costs were shifted to the public, less money for social programs, and the perpetuation of the tradition of policy-makers being stubbornly deaf to public opinion. 

Corporations prefer dictatorships. It is much easier to make money under such conditions. No workers’ rights, no health care, no pensions, no safety laws, no environmental laws, no strikes, no unions, no minimum wage to worry about. The national police and death squads ensure that there will be no dissent.  Elections provide the illusion of legitimacy, serving in reality as the anointing of the local proxy for foreign rule. What is demanded is someone who will most slavishly allow foreign (US) exploitation of the entire nation, and will most readily do the bidding of the master.

Finally, Mr Fisk is correct in using the word “supposed” when he accepts the official mythology and pins the blame for 9/11 on Saudi Arabians, or on any Arabs or Persians for that matter.  The use of the word “again” describing another attack on “looming towers’ presumes that these Saudis, A.Q., or the Taliban were responsible the first time, when all the evidence points much farther west and much closer to home.  No, the “murderers in question” in reality “largely hail (sic) from that friendly, moderate, brutal, oligarchical” capitalist elective dictatorship called the US National Security State, and the crimes were perpetrated by duly-elected American officials.

Yes, but Obama wants to postpone the disaster until after the next presidential election.  At the cost of enormous blood and money.