14 September 2008
Sarah Palin is Dick Cheney in drag
Palin will cement the votes of people who are never going to go for an African-American president, and win over Republicans fed up of Bush and suspicious of McSame. She is also going to cement the votes of Clinton supporters angry that Hillary wasn't anointed as the Democratic presidential nominee.
As an aside, these Clinton supporters are both racist and feminazis in outlook by refusing to transfer their votes to Obama. But of course, they would deny being racist. So a simple test would be to ask if they would have voted for Barack if he had twice Hillary's experience? I think the answer would still be no.
Now this isn't to say Obama is a great candidate either. You may recall that in an earlier post, I said that if he was unable to explain convincingly, what he intended to change, how he would do and pay for it, then voters were entitled to conclude Obama was full of hot air.
As I watched his acceptance speech, I was and still am unconvinced he really can turn the country around. Obama made lots of laudable spending promises but offered insufficient offsetting spending cuts and tax increases to pay for it all.
Tax increases he mentioned absolutely cannot pay for the existing budget deficit let alone the new spending he's promised. The arithmetic is simple. For 2008, spending will exceed income by $410b and for 2009, it will be $407b.
In other words, ignoring new promised spending, Obama must find $407b extra in taxes, or in spending cuts, or a combination of both - just for 2009. With an economy going down the crap tube, increasing corporate and high income personal taxes can't close this gap.
Slashing the bloated defence budget in half will help a lot. But this would be political suicide for him. And, might I add, it will never happen because a militaristic society (which is what America is) will never accept this. As an aside, why do I regard America as a militaristic society?
If you look at the US from a foreigner's perspective, the frequent small town military parades, gun culture, ostentatiously patriotic flag waving, a military budget equalling that of the rest of the world combined, pre-occupation with a candidate's service record (or lack thereof), incessant references to the "commander-in-chief", bellicose threats against countries who refuse to be vassal states etc...all these smack of a militaristic society believing that power comes from the barrel of a gun.
And that's what the Bush regime practised for the last eight years.
Patrick Buchanan, himself an arch conservative (and White House communications director in the Reagan administration), observed recently,
"Americans have many fine qualities. A capacity to see ourselves as others see us is not high among them."
But I digress.
Whether McSame or Obama ends up in the White House, the legacy problems left by Bush are so enormous and deep-seated that real solutions will require more than two terms and an emphatic victory to deliver.
And if McSame and Palin win, real solutions are very likely to recede into oblivion; to be replaced by more neo-con Voodoo economics - you know, the type practised by the Bush regime.
Labels: barack, buchanan, cheney, clinton, democratic party, hillary, mccain, obama, palin, patrick, reagan, republican party, sarah
24 June 2007
Apocalypto for the Neo-Cons
Even as the great neo-con dream slowly morphs into the putrid nightmare that it really is, we are only beginning to scratch the surface of the monstrous crimes committed under the guise of "democracy and freedom." A most disturbing and morally repugnant revelation to surface recently is Seymour Hersh's article about a patriotic and honourable US general who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal. Hersh's article must be read to understand some of the terribly malignant transformations wrought by the neo-cons.
General Taguba's treatment by factions in a Pentagon politicised by the neo-cons was in a word, disgraceful. Former Chief of Army, General Eric Shinseki, suffered similar treatment following his testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee on the eve of the Iraq invasion. So it is clear that like the broader American society under neo-con "leadership," hallmark values of a democracy such as honour, integrity, compassion, fairness etc have been twisted into Orwellian caricatures of the exact opposite in the uniformed services.
Taguba says it best in Hersh's article:
"There was no doubt in my mind that this stuff—the explicit images—was gravitating upward. It was standard operating procedure to assume that this had to go higher. The President had to be aware of this."
He said that Rumsfeld, his senior aides, and the high-ranking generals and admirals who stood with him as he misrepresented what he knew about Abu Ghraib had failed the nation.
"From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service,” Taguba said. “And yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable."
What was done in the name of "democracy and freedom" has been no different to what Stalin and Hitler did.
For those who deny the moral equivalence (because America is always morally right, of course), I say put yourselves to the test by using the same Nuremburg war crimes trial standards the US and its allies used to judge the Nazis. Go on, be all that you claim to be by proving what's good for the goose is equally good for the gander.
To quote Will Durant,
"A great civilisation is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within."
Labels: blair, bush, cheney, hitler, howard, iraq, libby, neo-conservatives, rumsfeld, stalin, surge, taguba, wolfowitz
08 January 2007
Are the Neo-Cons dead yet?
To answer this question, I think we will need to set milestones by which we can measure the real death of Team Neo-Con rather than just non-fatal injury. Critical short term milestones would be:
1. Congress investigates the who, how and why involving the fabrication of false evidence justifying the illegal invasion of Iraq.
2. Following the investigation, Congress indicts people like Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Eliot Abrams, John Ashcroft, Gen Geoffrey Miller (set up Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib prisons), Richard Perle and last but not least, Dubya the Decider (of criminal acts).
3. Congress acknowledges the number of Iraqi civilian casualties inflicted during the March 2003 invasion.
4. Congress forces the closure of Abu Ghraib and Bagram Airport prisons and indicts senior military and CIA officers for unlawful assault and murder of detainees.
5. Congress demands the prosecution of US military personnel responsible for the murder of an Al Jazeera journalist during the invasion.
Collectively, these would be tangible evidence of repudiating the unlawful actions of Team Neo-Con, and a genuine move towards restoring the badly sullied reputation of the US both at home and abroad. Although the reign of the Neo-Con regime will be judged as one of America's darkest times; doing the above will also prove the regime to be a transient aberration rather than the norm.
We should be greatly encouraged that Congress has already commenced step 1. We can only hope that the momentum will be sustained for the remaining steps.
Labels: abu ghraib, bush, cheney, condi rice, feith, neo-cons, neo-conservatives, rumsfeld, wolfowitz
09 November 2006
False dawn or real sea change?
Traditional Republican heartland voters seem to have cast their ballots with eyes on the economy and the sex and corruption scandals afflicting mostly Republican congressional representatives in both houses. In the case of the latter, the moral hypocrisy obviously reached intolerable levels for many diehard Republicans. In the case of the former, the heartland voters' sense of standing still economically despite the ruling elite becoming even more insanely wealthy, had finally broken through into their consciousness.
But an important point to note is that for many heartland voters, Iraq was less of an issue than good old personal economic interest. Nothing wrong with that. Except when your country is involved in an illegal war of aggression, THAT should be a real moral issue taking highest priority.
And in other cases where Iraq was the issue, most of the voters' concerns revolved around the war being unwinnable, mismanaged or costing too many US casualties. You seldom hear concerns about the original immorality and illegality of the war. Yet it is these issues that are the underlying drivers of global opposition to US policies.
As an aside, remember how Team Neo-Con and its supporters love to label war critics as un-American if they were US citizens, and anti-American if they were foreigners? Well now that the majority of US citizens have rejected Bush and the neo-con cabal, is this majority now un-American too? Or are the neo-cons the real un-American traitors guilty of subverting the constitutional foundations of their country?
Will the return of the Democrats warrant a change in negative world sentiment against the US? I think the answer depends not only on whether a military withdrawal from Iraq occurs but also if America's claim to being a real democracy plays out in holding Team Neo-Con accountable for its moral and war crimes.
If the new US Congress has the moral fibre to investigate and prosecute the likes of Big Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and General Geoffrey Miller (the culprit directly responsible for Abu Ghraib) for their crimes, then you don't have to be a Neo-Con Einstein to realise the world will get the message that true accountability exists in an American democracy.
This of course, begs the question for what crimes should the Neo-Con cabal be charged? Well, the last time I checked, it is still a war crime to prosecute unprovoked wars of aggression unsanctioned by the UN Security Council. And to test what's good for the goose is good for the gander, the same criteria used by the victorious Allies (of whom the US was one) at the Nuremburg Trials should be applied.
Remember that Hitler and his henchmen committed one of many war crimes when they fabricated an excuse (code named Operation Himmler) to invade Poland in September 1939. There is no difference between what the Nazis did then and what Team Neo-Con did in March 2003. So if ever the new US Congress wanted to prove that their notion of democracy is more than myth and much methane, then they should start cleaning house in earnest. That would silence critics and doubters immediately.
What are the implications for Poodle Tony?
Let's remember that the more highly principled British voters were the first to register their disgust with Blair involving them in an illegal war. They did so even after their American and Australian counterparts actually rewarded their respective leaders for involving them in the same illegal war (see "Blair bleeds a little more").
British voters disciplined Blair by cutting his parliamentary majority from 167 to 66 seats in May 2005. And the poodle has little choice but to relinquish office to Gordon Brown next year, after much pressure from his party colleagues to get out.
In contrast, US voters not only re-elected Big Dubya, they also increased his share of the vote. Likewise in Australia, voters not only returned Chi Hua-hua John to office, they also gave him control of the upper and lower houses of parliament. In short, Australian and American voters appear to be more similar than British voters.
This now brings me to Chi Hua-hua John.
Despite recent polls now showing that a majority of voters think he's a liar, he still enjoys a relatively high rating as preferred leader over the astoundingly unimpressive Opposition leader, Kim Beazley. While this is more a reflection on Beazley than on Howard, it also says a lot about the heartland voter in Australia.
Iraq is simply not a vote losing issue in Australia because the country hasn't suffered any direct casualties in battle. Were Australian soldiers to return home in body bags, then like their US cousins, heartland voters would become concerned over military casualties BUT not over Iraqi casualties. They've had plenty of opportunities to express concern over Iraqi civilian casualties from March 2003 but they weren't deterred from re-electing Chi Hua-hua John in a landslide.
What are we to make of this? The answer lies in understanding how Chi Hua-hua John won the election in November 2004. This self-proclaimed statesman cynically played racial and religious cards to exploit latent racism and xenophobia unhappily rife in many heartland voters.
On the eve of the election, Howard falsely claimed that a boatload of Middle-Eastern asylum seekers (ironically Iraqis fleeing the war in Iraq!) were throwing their children overboard in a vain attempt to stop a Navy ship from towing them out to international waters. He infamously said that these weren't the sort of people fit to enter Australia and that he wouldn't be surprised if some were terrorists.
Note that when Howard made these claims, he had already been informed by the then acting Chief of Defence Forces, Air Marshal Angus Houston, that the claims of children being thrown overboard were simply untrue. But of course, this didn't stop the self-proclaimed US deputy sheriff from smearing and demonising a boatload of people fleeing from a war he helped to start.
Uttering these disgraceful lies boosted his security and "tough on terrorists" image. This played very well to a heartland rife with resurgent racism and xenophobia, and so these voters went on to deliver a landslide victory to this odious character. How's that for a stunning demonstration of the "fair go" cultural value Chi Hua-hua John now demands newcomers adopt if they wish to become citizens and permanent residents?
So without Australian military casualties, what will unseat Chi Hua-hua John? I'm sorry to say that it'll be crass personal economic interest on the part of the voter. In the absence of a moral imperative driving voting decisions, it is most often the economic imperative that will dominate. In such situations, only when people lose jobs in a recession or lose homes when interest rates are too high, do governments lose office.
If inflation continues unabated and the Reserve Bank of Australia is forced to increase interest rates a few more times closer to the next election around November 2007, there will be a good chance Australian voters will punish Howard. Whether they do so sufficiently for him to lose office remains to be seen.
But they have clearly demonstrated that illegal wars and immoral leaders take a back seat to good old personal economic interest.
Labels: anti-american, cabal, cheney, condi rice, corruption, feith, geoffrey miller, iraq, john howard, neo-cons, neo-conservatives, neocons, perle, rumsfeld, tony blair, un-american, war crime, wolfowitz
16 August 2006
Neo-con freedom and democracy for Lebanon
Imagine this comic nightmare scenario. The world suffers for eight years under Big Dick Cheney ruling by proxy through Big Dubya. Then Big Dick runs for president and wins two terms in his own right thereafter. Wow, the world gets 16 years of Big Dick! Someone please pass me a Tylenol...I just had a frisson of terror...
Black humour aside, now that there's a ceasefire in Lebanon, let's check out some of the results of the "birth pangs" of neo-con "freedom and democracy in Lebanon" (as Condi Fried Rice so eloquently put it), shall we?
In order to build a new, free and democratic Lebanon, Team Neo-Con says it's vital to thoroughly demolish the old one first...

Credit: BBC
Part of the democratic cleansing process demands all forms of terrorists (NB not neo-con approved freedom fighters) be rendered dead, as was convincingly demonstrated in Qana, Lebanon...

Credit: AP/Nasser Nasser
And in the "War on Terror," it's absolutely critical to ensure Islamic Fascists are rendered dead with extreme prejudice using precision guided weapons supplied by the good guys, the Neo-Con Christian Fascists holding court in the White House and Downing Street...

Credit: Jeroen Kramer
You see, Team Neo-Con believes that if you don't get them when they're young, they'll grow up into American-hating Islamic Fascists; bent on returning the favour to the greatest messianic empire on Earth!
Labels: bush, cheney, christian fascists, condi rice, democracy, freedom, islamic fascists, lebanon, messianic empire, neo-cons, neo-conservatives, neocons, qana, war on terror