***RAE: whoever is pulling the strings on this planet right now is a MASTER at generating fear. The more fear the better.***

RAE, please watch these “The Power of Nightmares” documentries:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/12/22/212041/57/454/425671

or Here:

http://www.google.com/search?q=power+of+nightmares+part+1&tbo=p&tbs=vid:1&source=vgc&aq=1&oq=Power+of+Night

Adam Curtis exposes the public manipulation we sense but usually don’t understand. His BBC documentaries are legendary in Britain but practically unknown in the US. An American network executive who wouldn’t even let his name be used said “we would be crucified if we showed that here”. These documentaries are like a graduate course in how the American and British public has been herded like cattle since the end of World War I.

The Power of Nightmares episode 1 is about the ideological revulsion to the consumer society created by industry and public relations. Simultaneously, Sayyid Qutb resolved to purge the Muslim world of Western consumerism while Leo Strauss resolved to make consuming Americans Crusaders for freedom around the world.  Ayman Zawahiri was a student of Qutb and Paul Wolfowitz was a student of Strauss.

The Power of Nightmares episode 2 shows Bin Laden and the Neo cons fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan and how the Soviet collapse left both without an enemy to herd their public with.

The Power of Nightmares episode 3 shows how 911 was used to give those “with the most fear, the most power” and how the Neo cons recreated the terrorist threat.

Peace, Best Wishes and Hope

gerard: “Rae, I think it is not a plan that is missing.”

Oh yes it is. A plan is an itemized list, in chronological order, of the steps required to achieve a goal. Please show me the list.

gerard: “It is a belief in the possibilities of the future.  So much news now concerns grave dangers that it tends to paralyze people in fear and dread, which inhibits their hope and their vision.”

Believing is not necessarily knowing. Countless millions believe in the most bizarre fantasies even to the point of sacrificing their lives in defense of their believes. My point is that a “belief in the possibilities of the future” is as worthless as hope except as you stated…gotta believe in something - so it acts as a pacifier. Achieves nothing.

As far as the news paralysing people in “fear and dread” goes - well, with all due respect, that’s nonsense. News is news. It is people who self-generate “fear and dread” and all the other useless emotions that are so prevalent today. To immerse oneself in immobilizing emotional expressions is PART OF THE PROBLEM and certainly isn’t part of any solution to anything that I’ve ever experienced. It’s “fear and dread” paired with ignorance and lack of discipline that makes the ostrich stick his head in the sand. Accomplishes nothing.

gerard: “Young people are less susceptible to despair, and so the main hope of the world is in their hearts and minds.”

And your source for such a report is….? Young people watch “adults” for cues as to how to behave. When so many of the adult role models are acting like infantile nincompoops I wouldn’t put much stock in the young “saving the world.”

A long time ago it was said “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Fear is the great immobilizer. And whoever is pulling the strings on this planet right now is a MASTER at generating fear. The more fear the better.

That’s right gerard!

War has morphed into the religion of choice. The bully wielding the biggest fist full of nukes is god; where sanctions are political blackmail against those who do not wish to forfeit their own national resources to the bully. The Industry of War, in concert with the Wall Street Gambling houses, is not worried about Iranian nuclear ambitions. What these Lord of the Fly bullies do wish to posses though, and have from day one, is to, by proxy of other people’s innocent children, place their bloody boots into those Iranian oil pits.

The forces in the universe are neither good nor evil. But, misappropriated into the hands of those who perceive those forces as weapons of power, then do they manifest as evil.

It’s a sad day all around when all that humanity has to show for itself; at the pinnacle of its vain scientific achievements, is a magnificent reflection of a vile, self-serving, killing machine.

Let’s hope that, somewhere along the line, wisdom and understanding prevail, before Gaia tires of our bloody boots and shakes the irritant fleas from her back, or we render our host as uninhabitable, and perish.

Peace, Best Wishes and Hope

I’m in sympathy with most of the postings here. They’re well written and they appear to be heartfelt, and rational, but these postings serve no purpose other than preaching to the choir, or pissing off the wing nuts.

We need to take part in non-violent action, in the form of political protest and demonstration.

“I and all my classmates are very sad because of the situation in our homeland. When our teacher said in the class that many people have been killed in Afghanistan, I and my all classmates started weeping because everyone has relatives there. I expect America not to kill the poor Afghans. They are hungry and poor.”

“There was just a roaring sound, and then I opened my eyes and I was in a hospital,” said the boy, called Assadullah, speaking in Peshawar after being taken across the border for medical help. “I lost my leg and two fingers. There were other people hurt. People were running all over the place”.

“A US bomb flattened a flimsy mud-brick home in Kabul on Sunday blowing apart seven children as they ate breakfast with their father. The blast shattered a neighbour’s house killing another two children”

“We pulled the baby out, the others were buried in the rubble. Children were decapitated. There were bodies with no legs. We could do nothing. We just fled.”

“……..better stand clear and fire away. Given this implicit decision, the slaughter of innocent people, as a statistical eventuality is not an accident but a priority—-in which Afghan civilian casualties are substituted for American military casualties.”

“Even though civilian deaths have not been the deliberate goal of the current bombing—-as they were for the attackers of 9/11—the end result has been a distinction without a difference. Dead is dead, and when one’s actions have entirely foreseeable consequences, it is little more than a precious and empty platitude to argue that those consequences were merely accidental.”

“If it were not for the missiles the West has sent into Kandahar and Kunduz, these children whose faces we now see in our newspapers would not have had to take to the roads, desperately trudging the hills and deserts and sitting in tents on a bare plain.

And don’t think that just because they have suffered so much during the last generation that their grief is any the less now. Or because they don’t get obituaries in The New York Times that each of the civilian lives lost in Afghanistan isn’t as precious to their loved ones as the people who died in the Twin Towers.”

These wars were horribly wrong from their inception, in addition to the human suffering, death and destruction; these wars have displaced millions of people, cost trillions of dollars, and destabilized that whole area. The Afghanistan government is corrupt, and does not have the support of the people. Afghanistan, is, Viet Nam all over again. (Even the “Phoenix Program” has been revived.)

Our addiction to oil led us to intrude into an area of the world where we had no right to be. Is it any wonder that militarists from that area of the world responded to those intrusions? The “elitists” who endorsed these intrusions were fools, and they lacked understanding of basic human responses, let alone the most basic of moral precepts.   

We need to end our wars of empire by actively calling for bringing the troops home, now!

I just don’t subscribe to the notion that all our ills are a result of the Corporate Oligargy. Maybe I’m not Left enough for some. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mind seeing the Enrons & AIGs put out of business but I also don’t believe the masses are capable of running the means of production.

I’m also not ready to rush off to war at whim, but 3000 innocent people were murdered one September morning. I still want Osama been Forgotten’s head on a pole for that. Part of the Tillman Brothers’ legacy is the one can be Left, even progressive and still be patriotic enough to defend US.

The analogies of Afghanistan to Viet Nam are apparent and more established every year. IMHO, it was the diversion at whim of Iraq that bogged US down.

Now we are starting a blame game rather than addressing a problem. The hole was dug so deep that it’ll probably take 4 Left (or Left-Center) Presidential terms to recover.

Rae, I think it is not a plan that is missing.  It is a belief in the possibilities of the future.  So much news now concerns grave dangers that it tends to paralyze people in fear and dread, which inhibits their hope and their vision.  Young people are less susceptible to despair, and so the main hope of the world is in their hearts and minds.

Many of them are more world-minded and alert than previous generations, and the internet is helping to bring people together.  Governments are reaching the end of their rope, and, along with the UN are moving at a snail’s pace toward—if not peace—at least a better understanding of inter-related problems like nuclear weapons, environmental damage and the unsustainable gap between a few rich and many poor people. Corporations are still hung up on control through financial dominion, but, contrary to popular belief, I think they are probably just about as scared as the rest of us.
  Fear won’t do the job,but at least it might provide a period of suspended animation, so to speak, where urgent needs have time to work their way into a majority of consciences worldwide.
  I know it’s a fragile—maybe vacuous—hope, but it’s all I can see to believe in at the moment.  One has to believe in something—and for me it is not war and has not been war since WWII.

It seems we’re unanimously in agreement that war is an obscenity.

It’s clear we all have long lists of reasons that support our views.

It’s equally clear that none of us has any plausible, workable plan that will bring about the changes necessary to eliminate war. All we do, it seems, is sit around and howl at the moon.

All we can do is HOPE.

Regrettably, hope is not a plan.

Now that someone mentions religion, I have to jump in here.  War is the modern religion—not Christianity, Islam, Judaism or Shamanism, Buddhism, Hinduism or Voodoo.  All religions differ from each other in some way and waste energy quarrelling or trying to convert people. 
  War stands alone as the unconsciously chosen Master of us all.  The more outrageously destructive its weapons, the more we believe in it, hence the more power it holds and the more dangerous it becmes.
  People who do not believe in war are either silenced by threats of disloyalty or prevented from making effective contact with powers that could stop it. 
  More resources, energy and money are devoted to war than to all other human efforts.  Why?  Because we believe in war—or if we don’t believe, are passively dragged along the lines of least resistance.
  War is even preached in our churches when the going gets rough.  War is supported by our governments.  Methods, techniques, strategies, tactics are taught to our kids in schools and via games nd sports.  Of course it is disguised as “righteous” or “athletic” or “competitive training”  or “makes men out of boys,” etc.  It rules corporate behavior where the weapon is money. 
  When you stop to think of it, it’s everywhere. We are swimming in it.  Be need to get out before we drown.

It is now painstakingly evident that Obama is a token
like the “house niggas” of the slavery era, the reasons are All the campaign lies he has produced like 1. Public option(healthcare), 2. Transparency in Gov., 3.Iraq war troop pullout in 11months, 4. tax credits for childsupport paying fathers, 5. Stoping torture/rendition or holding the prior admin. accountable and closing Guantonimo to name a few. He is a puppet to the ruling banking families & Isreal with the dual citizen Rahm Emmanuel dictating pro-Isreal American taxpayer funded policy(6billion per yr.)while they commit genocide against the palestinians Unsanctioned and the corrupt drug dealing Afghan Gov./Wally(Karzai’s brother)dealing drugs by the ton and funded by American Taxpayer money while we die in the streets and are incarcerated at staggering rates for crumbs comparably. Obama’s war is no different than Bush’s Iraq or LBJ’s Vietnam. He is a spineless figurehead and is bought off and the current Republican/Democratic farce is like our sports/entertainment industry, distracting americans from the truth’s that the MSM won’t report but a growing number of Americans are finding thru internet news like this site!. A lie is a lie and murder is murder nomatter which presidents facilitates it!. The true leaders willing to stand for truth and justice have been murdered or silenced as few are willing to put their lives and become mayrtrs for Gods truth like MLK. Obama and All previous presidents backwards with the exception of Carter/JFK have cowtowed the line of the Banking elite evidenced by his appointments of the very scoundrels responsible for previous wars and the financial meltdown to his administration to continue the carnage at the taxpayers expense(R. Gates/H. Paulson to name a few). Revelations prophecies are true and it’s obvious that the massively corrupt/infiltrated American Gov. will play a central role in the fulfillment of Gods word. Pray for our children and your families salvation for Divine intervention is the only power capable of stopping the “principalities of evil in High places and the wicked rulers of this earth!” Ephesians 6:12   God Bless!

logkAW:
Then why was he complaining that the stat weren’t available?

“The reports are easy to find at DOD under press releases.”

He just told you, dummy!

T Mauel:
If all these casualties are going unreported, how do YOU know?

That high-speed buzzing sound that you hear is not an echo, but Orwell spinning in your head.

In a uni-polar world, there is no right or left, only perpetual deception. If your not deceived, then you must need to see your local pharmacist to get placed on a steady diet of Prozac or one of those other mind-bending conformity pills.

Peace, Best Wished and Peace

You know where the root is, Ms. Goodman. Why are you content to do topiary?

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2010/02/22/meanwhile/

Good title. Good concept. Good article. Sanda

There will never be change as long as overwhelming numbers of people within any country, any empire, identify with the powerful. Identification with the strong man/men seems deeply imbedded in the human psyche; why else would so many people follow leaders who are, in essence, screwing their followers? I wish this were not true, but it helps to explain much of human history.

I just watched the Smiley program.. It portrays the Riverside Church speech as the launch of Martin King’s dissent from the Vietnam policy and the occasion of his break with Lyndon Johnson.  It was not.  That had happened with his FIRST speech on the war at the Nation Institute in Los Angeles five weeks earlier.  The Riverside speech was partly an answer to the criticism he received for the Nation speech, and the Smiley program misrepresents the sequence and the history.  It’s good that Dr. King did not fall silent after criticism of the Nation speech, but the first speech was the benchmark, the one that took the greatest courage because it was such a break with the past, with the president, with some other black leaders. It was easily the more important of the two speeches.  And it meant so much to us at the time.

The Nation speech can be read at http://www.aavw.org/special_features/speeches_speech_king02.html

Who is it, precisely, who is “increasingly” comparing it to Viet Nam?

The echo chamber of the wacko left, maybe?

Thank You Amy!!!

Keep on nipping at the heels of despotism!

“Our President Is Deceiving the American Public”: Says Pentagon Papers Whistleblower of President Obama and the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq:

Watch Video:
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/30/our_president_is_deceiving_the_american

Former Commandant, U.S. Marine Corps, Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler stated that, “War is a racket and patriotism is nothing but the last refuge of scoundrels”.

Indeed it is! And, peace is the perpetual enemy to this industry of war. An army of soldiers can do anything but sit on their bayonets. They must either use them, or lose them.

WAR! What the hell is it good for!?
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!!

Peace, Best Wishes and Hope

Obama at last dons the warrior’s leather jacket.  He is now officially The National Tough Guy.  From now on he will conduct all his press conferences talking out of one side of his mouth while a smoking cigarette dangles from the other side.  Someone get him a codpiece.

Rae:  If expressing a need for morality and cooperation is “wallowing in naivete” we are indeed down the drain already, as some TD people insist.
My plea is premised on the fact that human beings have lost morality and cooperation many times, and have struggled to reclaim them by coming together at last with a common vision.  Lose the vision and you lose all.

Rae:  If expressing a need for morality and cooperation is “wallowing in naivete” we are indeed down the drain already, as some TD people insist.
My plea is premised on the fact that human beings have lost morality and cooperation many times, and have struggled to reclaim them by coming together at last with a common vision.  Lose the vision and you lose all.

I fully agree with you, gerard, about how we need to move from “exploitation to morality and cooperation”.

However, as we both wallow in our naivete, “the wealthy” maintain an iron grip on the helm of the economic con game - our “primary obscenity.” And they aren’t ever going to let go willingly. Stack a dollar up against a moral and the moral loses every time.

To pull hugely profitable wars out of the equation would be as devastating to the “American way of life” as to ban oil. If you are correct that “vision of better ways motivates people to change” then I think we’re doomed to endure the status quo for generations to come. Any vision that threatens the largess enjoyed by BIG CORPA will very quickly be blinded and handed a white cane as compensation.

As Larry Pinkney of BlackCommentator wrote so long ago about Obama:

This is a man who has enjoyed the fruits of America at the blood and expense of Black Americans and others, but who has paid virtually no dues.

This is a man whose father had also enjoyed the fruits of university schooling in America but subsequently returned to his native Kenya.

This is a man, who also like his father before him, neither served in a branch of the US military nor in any organization in America opposed to US military adventurism.

This is a man who as a deeply corporate military industrial complex US Presidential candidate, has called for “unilateral” US military actions in other nations. [And why not? After-all, his father, himself, or his wife and children were not and will not be the ones killing and being killed.]

The economic system is the primary obscenity—a system that is rigged to favor the wealthy at the expense of everybody else except the minority at the top.  That economic system depends on the dominance of war production and engagement for both jobs and revenue, as well as for American power. 
  It is entirely possible, but difficult, to re-direct that economy away from the military-industrial complex which we have learned to depend on to keep our economy running.  Because so many millions of us are dependent both directly and indirectly on this huge military expenditure, we ordinary people are not even very conscious of the fact that we are living off of the destruction of foreign countries and the killing and wounding of foreign people. 
  It is easier for us to believe that the wars are necessary to stop “terrorism”, or that “wars are inevitable”  even though both ideas are probably false.
  As Americans we are guilty of crimes of omission (what we do not do) as well as crimes of commission (crimes wo do commit).  We need to change our economic system, but guilt doesn’t motivate people to change.  Vision of better ways motivates people to change. 
  Vision is lacking.  We not only need whistle-blowers like Ellsberg.  We need people who can envision how to move America from exploitation to morality and cooperation for a better world.
  Such people are probably already out there, getting ready to build for tomorrow. We need to take our left/right squabbles and pessimism and get out of their way.