[Response to Jack Random's "The Devil Down in Georgia" (below).]
Absolutely. This is the best possible circumstance for the neocons. The war against terrorism is difficult to perpetuate endlessly because the public grows tired of fighting a vague, invisible, uncertain enemy. But the majority of the U.S. public remembers the Cold War very well and that makes it easier to sell. It involves certainties. Russia, drunk with new wealth and a new epoch of Czars, has recovered from its experiment with liberal democracy and reasserts itself as a superpower once again. The neocons must be ecstatic. This is the global politics they trained in and understand so well. It is the philosophical heart of the Project for a New American Century. Both the leadership in Moscow and Washington are well aware the game is back on and they settle in for the deep freeze behind mountains of wealth.
Indeed, what could Saakashvili have been thinking? I find it hard to believe he could be so ignorant of history, of the crimes of the Bush administration or the eagerness of Russia to reassert itself. Perhaps he is deeply invested in the military-industrial complex. Perhaps he is willing to sacrifice the safety of his own citizens in order to be part of the new front line - an egomaniacal delusion in which he is a heroic political soldier for democracy.
As usual, the bottom line is the bottom line and the price is paid in human blood. Human sacrifice by any other name is still barbarous and the 21st century barbarians could not be more obvious.
JAZZMAN CHRONICLES. DISSEMINATE FREELY.
THE DEVIL DOWN IN GEORGIA:
Resurrecting the Cold War
By Jack Random
“In the 21st century nations do not invade other nations.”
Senator John McCain, August 13, 2008
It is inconceivable that a major candidate for president of the United States of America should be unaware that the government he wishes to lead began the 21st century with a foreign policy of aggressive war and military domination christened by the invasions of two sovereign nations.
When that candidate is a long-standing political front man for the Neoconservative brain trust that authored the policy (Project for a New American Century), it strains the last fibers of credulity. For a man who considers himself a foreign policy expert, Senator John McCain has taken his place alongside our brash lame duck president as an embarrassment to the nation.
Is he demented? Does he consider our actions in Afghanistan and Iraq incursions, diplomatic overtures or simply humanitarian assistance?
As Vladimir Putin might say: If Iraq is an incursion then Russia’s actions in neighboring Georgia are little more than a firm handshake.
Not to be outdone, our president took a respite between vacations to issue a warning reminiscent of a former era but it played more like a bullied child: If you don’t stop now, I’m not going to be your friend any more!
One of the more fascinating aspects of the American response has been substituting references to Georgia with Iraq and Russia with America. Consider transcriptions of these gems from the mouth of our clueless leader:
“[Iraq’s] sovereignty and territorial integrity must be respected. [Washington] must live up to its commitment to withdraw its invading forces from all [Iraqi] territory.”
This one does not require transcription:
“Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century.”
Are John McCain and little George reading from the same script?
What is most puzzling in this conflict is the behavior of Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili who triggered the Russian response by taking military action in South Ossetia. The reaction was as predictable as the salivation of Pavlov’s dogs but Saakashvili seems perplexed that America and her allies have not rushed to his government’s defense.
Is the man insane? Did he really think that America, with its forces bogged down in two major occupations, was eager to start another war with Russia on the Russian border?
If he is not a madman then someone made promises they had no intention of honoring.
If Saakashvili has not yet awakened to the fact that he and his nation are sacrificial pawns in this game of international chess, he soon will. His mentor-ally in the United States wasted no time pushing through a missile defense agreement with Poland – a move that every objective observer knows is not directed at Iran or “rogue states” but at Moscow.
Not content with the damage they have already done to America’s standing in the world, the neoconservative horror factory still in charge of our foreign policy (along with their profiteering allies in the military industrial complex) have used the waning days of the Bush White House to put in place the necessary elements for a return to the Cold War – a war that was never cold and cost millions of innocent lives culminating in Vietnam.
Are we safer now, Mr. President?
Pay no attention to the ravings of John McCain. He is not president and his ignorance in critical matters of foreign policy is so profound it numbs the mind. We are not going to war on the Russian border. We will not severe the primary source of Europe’s energy supply. We will not risk a military confrontation between nuclear powers to bolster the government of Mikheil Saakashvili.
We are not completely insane.
We will however return to the insanity of an arms race – nuclear and otherwise – pitting us against the Russians with the Chinese content for now to sit this one out.
If the policies of intimidation and confrontation continue, there will be wars with nations such as Georgia and Ukraine serving as our proxies.
There will be blood and there will be blood money for corporate mercenaries and arms dealers.
The devil has come to Georgia but he is not Vladimir Putin. Russia is only acting as we would act if a major foreign power came to our border – as we would have if the Soviets had not backed down when they attempted to plant missiles in Cuba circa 1962.
No. The devil down in Georgia wears the familiar mask of the Neocon. The names behind the mask are Wolfowitz, Perle, Bolton, Abrams, Kristol, Khalilzad, Bush, Cheney and McCain.
They have bankrupted the nation, morally and economically, but they have profited perversely from the effort. They have never lost hold of the dream that is the world’s nightmare.
They will not stop pushing until we reach the endgame of world domination or mass annihilation or both.
Rest assured, if we allow the Project for a New American Century to move forward, the world will awaken, all but a few of our allies will peel away, and America will stand and fall alone.
Jazz.
[See “John McCain and the Project for a New American Century” by Joseph A. Palermo, The Huffington Post, June 18, 2008.]
Sunday, August 17, 2008
Friday, August 15, 2008
Jake's Word: The Case for Impeachment
[In response to "The Case for Impeachment" by Jack Random. Posted 8/15/08 by Newsdaily Canada and Buzzle.com.]
Beautifully, persuasively stated as always. If we only had representatives in government who possessed such talents, and such conviction.
Instead the show business of news goes on. The Edwards affair totally irrelevant yet there it is with more coverage than the war in Georgia, or yet another glaring crime by this ridiculous administration. Does nothing inspire the wrath of the American people anymore? Or are those crumbling towers so fixed in our memory as an inspiration for hatred of the "other" that nothing else makes an impression?
This afternoon I saw John McCain addressing the issue of the war in Georgia. I'm sure you saw it as well. His position was completely predictable of course, but one statement stunned me. He actually said these words, "In the 21st century one nation cannot invade another." The level of doublethink required to make such a statement requires a degree of denial that beggars the term. It made all the more obvious that McCain will continue and possibly intensify the policies of the most criminal administration in U.S. history.
On the other hand, Obama can make that very same statement and not contradict himself. He has opposed the Iraq war all along.
There is also the issue that Iraq has a $70 billion surplus while the U.S. sinks in debt in no small part due to that war. If the Iraqi people and government want the U.S. to leave, if they are financially prospering, what rationale would possibly serve as an excuse to stay?
I do not know what kind of president Barak Obama would be, but one thing is clear, he would not be the same president as John McCain and a continuation of the ongoing criminal enterprise in the nation's highest office. If the citizens of the U.S. cannot see this by now then they are truly living in a state of delusion from which they are unlikely to awake until the U.S. is no more.
Jake Berry
Newsdaily Canada: http://Newsdaily.ca.
Buzzle.com: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/the-case-for-impeachment-the-crimes-of-george-bush.html
Beautifully, persuasively stated as always. If we only had representatives in government who possessed such talents, and such conviction.
Instead the show business of news goes on. The Edwards affair totally irrelevant yet there it is with more coverage than the war in Georgia, or yet another glaring crime by this ridiculous administration. Does nothing inspire the wrath of the American people anymore? Or are those crumbling towers so fixed in our memory as an inspiration for hatred of the "other" that nothing else makes an impression?
This afternoon I saw John McCain addressing the issue of the war in Georgia. I'm sure you saw it as well. His position was completely predictable of course, but one statement stunned me. He actually said these words, "In the 21st century one nation cannot invade another." The level of doublethink required to make such a statement requires a degree of denial that beggars the term. It made all the more obvious that McCain will continue and possibly intensify the policies of the most criminal administration in U.S. history.
On the other hand, Obama can make that very same statement and not contradict himself. He has opposed the Iraq war all along.
There is also the issue that Iraq has a $70 billion surplus while the U.S. sinks in debt in no small part due to that war. If the Iraqi people and government want the U.S. to leave, if they are financially prospering, what rationale would possibly serve as an excuse to stay?
I do not know what kind of president Barak Obama would be, but one thing is clear, he would not be the same president as John McCain and a continuation of the ongoing criminal enterprise in the nation's highest office. If the citizens of the U.S. cannot see this by now then they are truly living in a state of delusion from which they are unlikely to awake until the U.S. is no more.
Jake Berry
Newsdaily Canada: http://Newsdaily.ca.
Buzzle.com: http://www.buzzle.com/articles/the-case-for-impeachment-the-crimes-of-george-bush.html
Sunday, July 20, 2008
Mind of Mansel: Overhead
french lanterns swinging, whaling songs
echoing down whiskey bottles too long
betrayal blowed from waves to the skies
the ship disappeared from one's own eyes
set your oars overhead this labyrinth's closed
hell is is coming as the great beast blows
ecstasy came as a hovering cloud of dust
spraying out like a filth over most of us
duck and cover or you'll parch and rust
you must keep up with our bloody lust
hold your hands overhead this wars cold
hell is just the tip of the horned beast coat
the Bastille was covered in ice so they said
the veteran wrote in blood from his head
crawled like a worm to the mailing bin
was arrested for mailing his thoughts in
hold your hands overhead this plea is out
where it ends is left in some grave doubt
Chorus:
Overhead, overhead
faith will linger but its not dead
- Chris Mansel
echoing down whiskey bottles too long
betrayal blowed from waves to the skies
the ship disappeared from one's own eyes
set your oars overhead this labyrinth's closed
hell is is coming as the great beast blows
ecstasy came as a hovering cloud of dust
spraying out like a filth over most of us
duck and cover or you'll parch and rust
you must keep up with our bloody lust
hold your hands overhead this wars cold
hell is just the tip of the horned beast coat
the Bastille was covered in ice so they said
the veteran wrote in blood from his head
crawled like a worm to the mailing bin
was arrested for mailing his thoughts in
hold your hands overhead this plea is out
where it ends is left in some grave doubt
Chorus:
Overhead, overhead
faith will linger but its not dead
- Chris Mansel
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Mind of Mansel: McCain's Long Campaign
The Next Best Thing To Being Him
A new documentary is set to hit store shelves in a few days which features a haggard John McCain alongside a thousand mourners in India weeping then popping out a cell phone and saying into the camera, "Bipartisan or not, it's been a long campaign. That's why I depend on Verizon Wireless." The camera cuts to a surging skyline of pouring rain in the distance and off camera you can hear McCain shout, "Mud in my damn shoes, get me out of here!"
- Chris Mansel
A new documentary is set to hit store shelves in a few days which features a haggard John McCain alongside a thousand mourners in India weeping then popping out a cell phone and saying into the camera, "Bipartisan or not, it's been a long campaign. That's why I depend on Verizon Wireless." The camera cuts to a surging skyline of pouring rain in the distance and off camera you can hear McCain shout, "Mud in my damn shoes, get me out of here!"
- Chris Mansel
Saturday, July 05, 2008
Ode to Jesse Helms
"...between the legs hung the entrails; the vitals appeared, with the foul sack that makes excrement of what is swallowed."
Dante: Inferno, Canto XXVIII
Ah, but those words come to mind when reading of the death of Jesse Helms. Bring them forth, the limousines covered in the filth of the day. Riding on the rims, on the side of the highway, escorted by the Hell's Angels, the far right. The Minute Men down from the valley of good shooting, the natural lifers, the recent win for the NRA, let 'em gather and celebrate the death of one of their own.
- Chris Mansel
Dante: Inferno, Canto XXVIII
Ah, but those words come to mind when reading of the death of Jesse Helms. Bring them forth, the limousines covered in the filth of the day. Riding on the rims, on the side of the highway, escorted by the Hell's Angels, the far right. The Minute Men down from the valley of good shooting, the natural lifers, the recent win for the NRA, let 'em gather and celebrate the death of one of their own.
- Chris Mansel
Friday, July 04, 2008
AN ALTERNATIVE PROPOSAL: SOLAR ENERGY
Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has called for an incentive program in which the government pays half the cost of installing solar panels on homes (10 Million Solar Roofs Act of 2008). While useful and a dramatic improvement on the status quo, the proposal still requires the homeowner to make a significant investment at a time when money is tight. An alternative proposal would be to have the government provide solar panels on houses and other structures free of charge by renting the roof space in exchange for energy savings. There is no reason the program cannot be extended to other spaces (such as parking lots) public or private.
Taxpayers would provide the funding and reap the benefits of lower energy costs as well as cleaner air. The government would assume the responsibility of maintenance and improvements as technological advances allow. With the price of oil at an all time high and showing no signs of abating, the substantial initial costs would soon be transformed into a perpetual dividend.
There is no reason such a proposal need wait for the federal government. It can readily be implemented at the state or local level funded by selling bonds with a compelling return. The social benefits and economic return on such an investment is compelling indeed. In fact it is the only kind of investment that makes sense in these trying times.
Jazz.
Taxpayers would provide the funding and reap the benefits of lower energy costs as well as cleaner air. The government would assume the responsibility of maintenance and improvements as technological advances allow. With the price of oil at an all time high and showing no signs of abating, the substantial initial costs would soon be transformed into a perpetual dividend.
There is no reason such a proposal need wait for the federal government. It can readily be implemented at the state or local level funded by selling bonds with a compelling return. The social benefits and economic return on such an investment is compelling indeed. In fact it is the only kind of investment that makes sense in these trying times.
Jazz.
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
THE AGE OF RECKONING
We are living in an age where the consequences of past mistakes and excesses are coming to account. We have squandered our resources and attempted to hand the debt to future generations but the bill is due now and we can only pay by suffering foreclosure, homelessness, foregoing medical care, on and on. We have filled our atmosphere with the toxic wastes of the industrial age and now we suffer an endless chain of "natural" catastrophes from drought and fires to hurricanes and tornadoes, on and on. We have globalized the economy without globalizing labor and now we watch the decline of the working class both here and abroad. The decline of the working class is the decline of the consumer which will inevitably drag down the corporate beast responsible for the disaster. We have gone to war for oil and accelerated a rise in the price of gas, the price of food, the price of everything that requires fuel to produce and deliver goods to market. On and on.
We have lived under the delusion that our debts could be passed on but the Age of Reckoning is here. We cannot escape it. We must pay and future generations will pay as well.
We have lived under the delusion that our debts could be passed on but the Age of Reckoning is here. We cannot escape it. We must pay and future generations will pay as well.
Sunday, June 29, 2008
Fear and Loathing on McCain's Pierrepoint Express
This campaign is one for the books if that book was soaked in the blood of a child whose first word was gut and last was duck. John McCain is playing catch and release with the truth so bad that the fish are just swimming by the boat, a trail of excrement clogging up the Straight Talk Express exhaust. Every redneck in the country, and some in San Juan it seems are sending in letters to McCain and including racial slurs which McCain greedily answers and some he even includes in press releases.
McCain is searching, through Google and Ancestry.com to find the descendants of Pierrepoint, the famed British hangman because he plans to open an Abu Ghraib in Puerto Rico after he gets elected. He's consulted with Donald Rumsfeld who still holds court in a Denny's in Pennsylvania off the main interstate. The cells will have four foot deep holes at the center to coil the chains which will be iced. Uniforms of the day will be blood mesh and there will be no windows.
McCain is not trying to quell any of the rumors and even trying to add to them as the wire reports come in. It is said he has begun calling reporters at home not unlike Lyndon Johnson used to call editors to try and get everyone to back his message. Just recently he called in Rev. Dobson to commit some of his underage followers to hold signs outside a rally supporting McCain but not in Denver. It's too soon for that.
- Chris Mansel
McCain is searching, through Google and Ancestry.com to find the descendants of Pierrepoint, the famed British hangman because he plans to open an Abu Ghraib in Puerto Rico after he gets elected. He's consulted with Donald Rumsfeld who still holds court in a Denny's in Pennsylvania off the main interstate. The cells will have four foot deep holes at the center to coil the chains which will be iced. Uniforms of the day will be blood mesh and there will be no windows.
McCain is not trying to quell any of the rumors and even trying to add to them as the wire reports come in. It is said he has begun calling reporters at home not unlike Lyndon Johnson used to call editors to try and get everyone to back his message. Just recently he called in Rev. Dobson to commit some of his underage followers to hold signs outside a rally supporting McCain but not in Denver. It's too soon for that.
- Chris Mansel
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Mansel: Fundraising A Centimeter At A Time
Coveted by the undead a John McCain fundraising letter it is said can cure the most unruly sores in the after-life. Just rubbing it onto lesions garnered after a life of cruel acts against animals and mutual fund embezzlement will get you a lesion down from 6 cm to 5 cm almost immediately as reported recently in the Washington Times.
The Reverend Sun Yung Moon has begun a direct mailing program to all of his known aliases to receive as many as he can, stockpiling if you will for the afterlife, so he can anticipate those centimeters now. Worry will get you every time.
- Chris Mansel
The Reverend Sun Yung Moon has begun a direct mailing program to all of his known aliases to receive as many as he can, stockpiling if you will for the afterlife, so he can anticipate those centimeters now. Worry will get you every time.
- Chris Mansel
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Mansel: Divine Comedy on an Iowa Night
"Keep in thy memory what thou hast heard against thyself," the Sage bade me "but now give heed to what is here."
- Dante, The Divine Comedy: Inferno
Iowa
The skies darkened over Iowa as Air Force One departed. Residents turned to the ghostly mounds of garbage that used to be family heirlooms that were now artifacts of a time gone by. Wading through water the television news crews returned to the safety of Motels in the dry areas surrounding the damaged region and to their respective markets and remarked about the drop in the polls of Senator McCain. A man who has finally been allowed to return to the street where he has lived his whole life puts a gun to his head but stops as a large plane flies overhead. It's nightfall in Iowa again.
- Chris Mansel
- Dante, The Divine Comedy: Inferno
Iowa
The skies darkened over Iowa as Air Force One departed. Residents turned to the ghostly mounds of garbage that used to be family heirlooms that were now artifacts of a time gone by. Wading through water the television news crews returned to the safety of Motels in the dry areas surrounding the damaged region and to their respective markets and remarked about the drop in the polls of Senator McCain. A man who has finally been allowed to return to the street where he has lived his whole life puts a gun to his head but stops as a large plane flies overhead. It's nightfall in Iowa again.
- Chris Mansel
Sunday, June 08, 2008
Obama's Choice for VP
Hillary Clinton will not be Barack Obama's choice as a running mate.
By my accounting, a wide open field will come down to Jim Webb of Virginia, Bill Richardson of New Mexico, Barbara Boxer of California or Russ Feingold of Wisconsin.
All would be principled choices as each candidate opposed the Iraq War from its inception. Boxer and Feingold would suggest a traditional contemporary strategy of vying for the usual swing states -- most critically Florida. The selection of Richardson would make Hispanic voters key -- especially in the western states of New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and McCain's own Arizona. Jim Webb would be the most intriguing choice for it would hold the potential of breaking the Republican stranglehold on the south.
If you support Obama, contribute to Libertarian Bill Barr.
Jazz.
By my accounting, a wide open field will come down to Jim Webb of Virginia, Bill Richardson of New Mexico, Barbara Boxer of California or Russ Feingold of Wisconsin.
All would be principled choices as each candidate opposed the Iraq War from its inception. Boxer and Feingold would suggest a traditional contemporary strategy of vying for the usual swing states -- most critically Florida. The selection of Richardson would make Hispanic voters key -- especially in the western states of New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and McCain's own Arizona. Jim Webb would be the most intriguing choice for it would hold the potential of breaking the Republican stranglehold on the south.
If you support Obama, contribute to Libertarian Bill Barr.
Jazz.
Monday, June 02, 2008
Mansel: McCain and Fox Security
A close look in a shaving kit of John McCain's these days just might surprise you. Someone on his staff was trying to sell some grainy snapshots of a bag that could be described as a shaving kit in a press club dinner in Little Rock, Arkansas recently but I wasn't buying.
I asked this individual loudly, "What the hell man, hemlock! We all know he drank the blood and not the kool aid, what does he need hemlock for? To chew on like cocoa leaves after a meal?" He shuffled around and turned his back to me and approached the ghost of Sam Donaldson. A Fox news analyst who overheard my statement started kicking me in the shins but I slapped him on the cheek and he collapsed crying, wailing into his cell phone to Fox security. Which after a half hour turned out to be someone who looked alot like William Bennett in a local University sweatshirt who actually, no lie, asked me where the culprit was.
- Chris Mansel
(christophermansel@hotmail.com)
I asked this individual loudly, "What the hell man, hemlock! We all know he drank the blood and not the kool aid, what does he need hemlock for? To chew on like cocoa leaves after a meal?" He shuffled around and turned his back to me and approached the ghost of Sam Donaldson. A Fox news analyst who overheard my statement started kicking me in the shins but I slapped him on the cheek and he collapsed crying, wailing into his cell phone to Fox security. Which after a half hour turned out to be someone who looked alot like William Bennett in a local University sweatshirt who actually, no lie, asked me where the culprit was.
- Chris Mansel
(christophermansel@hotmail.com)
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Mansel: Stoned in Colorado
Stoned in Colorado part 1
Today while rummaging through a few press releases from the FBI I ran into Jann Wenner cooing next to an FBI agent about a trip to the White House should Obama win. Now why he would choose a story like this to do such a thing is anybody's guess. He did come out several years ago and the agents do work out but this is not a story about that, hell, there was enough incest in the camp.
Stoned in Colorado part 2
Sentenced in Utah, Warren Jeffs: that must have sent shockwaves through the straight press. You must get a good hotel room there if you know the Demi's or the Bruce's like Jann Wenner. Yes I guess starting US Weekly was a good idea. You can imagine that Rolling Stone might even do a cover and get over their pop image and get back to the days of the serious journalism if they want an invite to the White House. Lord knows Jann has been crawling up the pants leg of several…
I made a visit to Kinko's yesterday to have some random photos enlarged to see if Jann's lips were in fact infected and found an exchange of money taking place. The local magistrate was ordering a spy camera to place in the lapel of his tie so maybe there will be a sting operation or a sex tape. Imagine that, sex tape rocks Utah!
Chris Mansel
(Editor Note: Jann S. Wenner (born January 7, 1946, in New York City) is the co-founder and publisher of the pop music biweekly Rolling Stone, as well as the owner of Men's Journal and Us Weekly magazines.)
Today while rummaging through a few press releases from the FBI I ran into Jann Wenner cooing next to an FBI agent about a trip to the White House should Obama win. Now why he would choose a story like this to do such a thing is anybody's guess. He did come out several years ago and the agents do work out but this is not a story about that, hell, there was enough incest in the camp.
Stoned in Colorado part 2
Sentenced in Utah, Warren Jeffs: that must have sent shockwaves through the straight press. You must get a good hotel room there if you know the Demi's or the Bruce's like Jann Wenner. Yes I guess starting US Weekly was a good idea. You can imagine that Rolling Stone might even do a cover and get over their pop image and get back to the days of the serious journalism if they want an invite to the White House. Lord knows Jann has been crawling up the pants leg of several…
I made a visit to Kinko's yesterday to have some random photos enlarged to see if Jann's lips were in fact infected and found an exchange of money taking place. The local magistrate was ordering a spy camera to place in the lapel of his tie so maybe there will be a sting operation or a sex tape. Imagine that, sex tape rocks Utah!
Chris Mansel
(Editor Note: Jann S. Wenner (born January 7, 1946, in New York City) is the co-founder and publisher of the pop music biweekly Rolling Stone, as well as the owner of Men's Journal and Us Weekly magazines.)
Monday, May 05, 2008
Obama on Trade: In His Own Words
Indiana May 3, 2008:
I happen to believe in free trade. But we do the cause of trade no favors when we pass agreements that are filled with perks for every special interest under the sun and absolutely no protections for American workers. There’s absolutely no reason we should be giving tax breaks to corporations who ship jobs overseas. When I’m President, I will eliminate those tax breaks and give them to companies who create good jobs right here in America. We can also create jobs if we finally get serious about rebuilding our crumbling and decaying national infrastructure.
Ohio Debate 2/26/08:
As President of the United States I intend to make certain that every trade agreement that we sign has the labor standards, environmental standards and the safety standards that are going to protect not just workers but also consumers.
[Note: Many of us must decide who we can trust on the issues that matter most. One of those issues is trade. As citizens it is our responsibility to hold candidates accountable for their promises.]
I happen to believe in free trade. But we do the cause of trade no favors when we pass agreements that are filled with perks for every special interest under the sun and absolutely no protections for American workers. There’s absolutely no reason we should be giving tax breaks to corporations who ship jobs overseas. When I’m President, I will eliminate those tax breaks and give them to companies who create good jobs right here in America. We can also create jobs if we finally get serious about rebuilding our crumbling and decaying national infrastructure.
Ohio Debate 2/26/08:
As President of the United States I intend to make certain that every trade agreement that we sign has the labor standards, environmental standards and the safety standards that are going to protect not just workers but also consumers.
[Note: Many of us must decide who we can trust on the issues that matter most. One of those issues is trade. As citizens it is our responsibility to hold candidates accountable for their promises.]
Saturday, May 03, 2008
Colorado: Midnight Message from the Mind of Mansel
Colorado
Jack this is the one. We have got to get out to Colorado. Planned mutilations are the words circulating through the press core. Clitoridectomies and the tattooing of infants and that's just the F.B.I. I heard from that stringer from the Milwaukee Journal, you remember the guy who is always pulling on his fingers? The guy who flipped out on a Delta flight and started screaming about Santorum eating chili beans on Air Force One while being strawed to a pulpit in Wisconsin by a Iowa super delegate? Yea, him. He said he personally witnessed three F.B.I. crime scene photographers personally trample one another while trying to get to the scene then exposing themselves while urinating and under cutting the press core to Larry Flynt of all people. It stinks Jack.
As you well know the only reason the F.B.I. doesn't take curtain calls is because you don't want to see what they are doing behind the curtain. But anyway, the Washington Post of all trade rags is willing to pay us all expenses to get down there and get the story -- not for their archives but for the front page. They've lost in the campaign but haven't we all. There's a rumor floating around here in Alabama that the whole thing was planned as a Jim Jones like retreat for the Washington Times like fun crowd but I rather doubt it. I mean after all Bangkok hasn't lost its appeal to the Congressional junket to these sick bastards yet.
- Chris Mansel
Colorado Under The Knife's Head
They know nothing of Hoodoo in Colorado and this is their downfall. Just like in Idaho but that's another lysergic tale of of fistfulls of valium and phone calls to Missouri on stolen cards, Verizon fraud and a recreation vehicle that may still be burning outside a McDonalds just out off the interstate rest area.
Imagine Jack, a sacred egg and compressed hand and sexually predatory priests joining forces with the FBI brewing plastic oils and selling them at Cracker Barrels across america next to the VHS tapes of Hee Haw and the blue glass pitchers. A conjuring crossroads has venerated into the Blackhawk helicopter region of the U.S. From now on its enonymus americanus (burning bush) and that corpse from Wisconsin and heads for burials below the fold. Not since the Crescent City was galvinised and the ehads hung from street lamps, the informants carved in the work camps have the police chewed the left arm of libation in such a manner. I tell you Jack incest in the name of religion takes on a whole new name in begot's begot.
Chris Mansel
Jack this is the one. We have got to get out to Colorado. Planned mutilations are the words circulating through the press core. Clitoridectomies and the tattooing of infants and that's just the F.B.I. I heard from that stringer from the Milwaukee Journal, you remember the guy who is always pulling on his fingers? The guy who flipped out on a Delta flight and started screaming about Santorum eating chili beans on Air Force One while being strawed to a pulpit in Wisconsin by a Iowa super delegate? Yea, him. He said he personally witnessed three F.B.I. crime scene photographers personally trample one another while trying to get to the scene then exposing themselves while urinating and under cutting the press core to Larry Flynt of all people. It stinks Jack.
As you well know the only reason the F.B.I. doesn't take curtain calls is because you don't want to see what they are doing behind the curtain. But anyway, the Washington Post of all trade rags is willing to pay us all expenses to get down there and get the story -- not for their archives but for the front page. They've lost in the campaign but haven't we all. There's a rumor floating around here in Alabama that the whole thing was planned as a Jim Jones like retreat for the Washington Times like fun crowd but I rather doubt it. I mean after all Bangkok hasn't lost its appeal to the Congressional junket to these sick bastards yet.
- Chris Mansel
Colorado Under The Knife's Head
They know nothing of Hoodoo in Colorado and this is their downfall. Just like in Idaho but that's another lysergic tale of of fistfulls of valium and phone calls to Missouri on stolen cards, Verizon fraud and a recreation vehicle that may still be burning outside a McDonalds just out off the interstate rest area.
Imagine Jack, a sacred egg and compressed hand and sexually predatory priests joining forces with the FBI brewing plastic oils and selling them at Cracker Barrels across america next to the VHS tapes of Hee Haw and the blue glass pitchers. A conjuring crossroads has venerated into the Blackhawk helicopter region of the U.S. From now on its enonymus americanus (burning bush) and that corpse from Wisconsin and heads for burials below the fold. Not since the Crescent City was galvinised and the ehads hung from street lamps, the informants carved in the work camps have the police chewed the left arm of libation in such a manner. I tell you Jack incest in the name of religion takes on a whole new name in begot's begot.
Chris Mansel
Monday, April 21, 2008
Random Jack: Is it Just Me?
Is it just me or was the spin around the last debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton a decisive loss for George Stephanopoulos and Charles Gibson – the operative and the statue?
Is it just me or when Hillary kept looking at the rafters, did you think she was looking for snipers?
We have heard a lot about the Reverend Wright and the alleged elitism of Obama (Hillary Rodham Clinton playing the elitism card!) but very little about Hillary’s gaffes. The sniper fire story was flat out theater of the absurd but if you were in Ireland when Hillary claimed a substantive role in bringing the peace, you would know that gaffe was far more egregious.
It was not an associate who made these outrageous claims. It was Hillary. If Obama had made them, the race would be over.
Is it just me or does Bill Clinton’s southern drawl (is Arkansas really a southern state?) sound more and more like a used car salesman?
I lived in Nashville for five years. They don’t drawl like Bill Clinton.
I am disappointed in both Democrats for waffling on Fair Trade but Hillary’s waffling on the Iraq-Iran war is downright scary.
Is it just me or would Hillary Clinton have chosen John McCain as her running mate?
Jazz.
Is it just me or when Hillary kept looking at the rafters, did you think she was looking for snipers?
We have heard a lot about the Reverend Wright and the alleged elitism of Obama (Hillary Rodham Clinton playing the elitism card!) but very little about Hillary’s gaffes. The sniper fire story was flat out theater of the absurd but if you were in Ireland when Hillary claimed a substantive role in bringing the peace, you would know that gaffe was far more egregious.
It was not an associate who made these outrageous claims. It was Hillary. If Obama had made them, the race would be over.
Is it just me or does Bill Clinton’s southern drawl (is Arkansas really a southern state?) sound more and more like a used car salesman?
I lived in Nashville for five years. They don’t drawl like Bill Clinton.
I am disappointed in both Democrats for waffling on Fair Trade but Hillary’s waffling on the Iraq-Iran war is downright scary.
Is it just me or would Hillary Clinton have chosen John McCain as her running mate?
Jazz.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Mind of Mansel: American Prosthesis
American Prosthesis
By Chris Mansel
Part 1
Hospital tile and a sense of responsibility, that's what hit me when I first walked into a Veteran's hospital. I had been in triage situations in combat and hospital ships, Army hospitals in Germany, but this was different. This is the place where politicians come to be photographed and soldiers to be ignored. Any time day or night you can walk down the hallways and see blood trickling onto the floor or hear a voice crying out for help. After a while you start to wonder if all of the missing limbs aren't gathered somewhere in a room in the hospital, perhaps on another floor waiting to be reissued to another body.
It's not like the recruiting letters say, it's not like the news footage will show you. There are some who do want to return to battle but only to return to their buddies who they have fought beside for what seemed like an eternity, and there are some who want to go back and kill something, anyone. Their minds are twisted from fatigue and now their bodies deformed by gunfire or an explosion sit and drool staring at the television screen. They are never photographed with a visiting dignitary, that traffic is led away from the more troublesome rooms.
On my first visit there I saw a young Army private fall out of his room into the hallway screaming as his prosthetic limb gave way. He hit the floor hard and he swung his crutch at anyone who tried to help him up. He was crying uncontrollably. He started to shake and couldn’t stop his anger until another patient, a young black man with the lower half of his arm missing got down on the floor and took hold of him and held him as best he could until he calmed down. For a few minutes they were both cussing and yelling. The sounds they made went through the walls and out into the open, through the pressure built in the interstate by the hospital and into the neighborhoods they grew up in that would never except them back in the shape their mangled bodies were in now.
Napoleon Bonaparte said, "Go Sir, and don't forget that the world was made in six days. You can ask me for anything you like, except time." Strange words from a ruthless dictator but most of the patients in Veteran's Hospitals are here suffering from the words of ruthless dictators in one way or another. One day while touring the hospital and interviewing soldiers I came upon a young man who had lost his right arm and both legs. His demeanor was about what you'd expect. He greeted me with, "What in the hell are you and what in the hell do you want?"
I told him how sorry I was that he was in the condition he was in and I only wanted to ask him some questions. He snapped back, "Any goddamn answers you could want got blown off with my legs, man!" I backed out of the room quietly and started back down the hallway and heard him shouting back at me, "Hey, you giving up that easy, you just ain’t got it man, just ain't got it!" I stuck my head back in his doorway and he threw a glass of water at me just missing my head.
"Incoming!" He laughed loudly.
I said, "So I guess you want to talk, huh?"
His eyes cut through me as I entered the room; the rage in his voice was troubling. But it could be understood. He looked at my clothes and back up to my eyes and said, “Ever been there?”
I answered back, “Yea, four weeks ago as a matter of fact.”
“Four weeks ago…” He let the words fill the room before he spoke again. Embedded?
“No, we were doing freelance work.”
He lowered his brow, “We? You had someone else with you? Couldn’t handle it on you own?”
“Not exactly, my partner was there with me. He’s in town right now just not with me right now.”
“What he didn’t want to come in here and look at us?”
“What do you think?” I asked him this with a look to let him know the answer. We seemed to have wandered off the subject but I figured I would just let him talk. He was quiet for a few minutes and when he finally spoke again it wasn’t about my partner.
“You get hit, or Blackwater tuck you in at night like a good little mama’s bitch?”
I told him the story of Jack Random and myself and the family we helped to escape the private security forces, about the major and the redneck Army guy. He didn’t seem surprised.
He smiled and smiled a sad smile, “You think that was anything special?”
He reached down and lifted his blanket and scratched at his hip so nonchalantly that I don’t think he even realized he was doing it. The scar he revealed was hideous. I could tell he hadn’t been too long in recovery. I had seen wounds in his state before and I could tell that he had still to see several stages of draining of the wound which meant a few more times in surgery which meant more mental strain on his already fragile ego.
“Questions, like what questions? How I got my legs blown off, my arm, what? Tell me?” He asked impatiently.
I replied that I was curious about his experiences with his fellow soldiers and Iraqi civilians. I explained that I didn’t write for any major publication and I didn’t have an agenda.
He faced away from me and all the color went away from his face and said, “Well, I don’t know what to tell you man, I’m dead, just dead.” Tears began streaming down his face in a continuous flow to a point where they would not stop. He took a gun that I didn’t see and put it in his mouth and looked around the room and I thought he was going to pull the trigger. I jumped up from my chair and he fell out of the bed and I screamed: I just couldn’t help it. His face twisted with rage. I jumped back against the wall as several orderlies came to the door quickly and he took the gun out of his mouth and yelled for them to shut the fucking door.
His eyes were directly at me now and he put the gun back in his mouth and I must have gone pale because the orderlies at the small glass window in the door disappeared for a moment and came back with an older man who I guessed was a doctor I hadn’t seen before. He held up a piece of paper that had written on it a short message, “Do you have any medical conditions?”
For a moment I forgot about my safety and concerned myself with that short note. Here across from me sat a young man who had lost both his legs and one of his arms in the service of his country who now had a gun in his mouth and all they were worried about were getting sued by a journalist.
Saliva began to pour out of his mouth and the tears stopped. I felt so sorry for him but I was afraid to say anything. I had been in situations similar to this before and I had learned from experience to allow the individual to calm themselves down in their own time.
Outside the door I could hear the rustling and panic in the hallway. I could sense the sirens, the news vans, and every cliché you’ve ever seen. This was after all a Veteran’s Hospital in Washington D. C., the nation’s capital. The home of whoredom and the constant leaking ship of news that forever set sail on the putrid waters of suffering that wouldn’t for a second pass an opportunity to cover a story like this. I wondered to myself if the young man had thought past putting the gun in his mouth, if he had organized in his mind what he wanted to say or if he was so traumatized he could even see past the door of the room in his mind or with his eyes.
For a moment I looked over at him and he took the gun out of his mouth. He started to say something and raised the gun back up to his lips and squeezed the trigger a little, my eyes were so focused on his finger I could hardly breathe. But then he took the gun away from his mouth and rested it against the side of his head and said one word, “Gunship.”
There was a loud banging on the door and a voice from the other side said, “Marine you have a hostage in there, you’re a hostile force! Relinquish that weapon!” The Marine screamed out, “Perkins get the fuck away from here before I shoot you instead, asshole.”
As I watched this terrified young man, and he was young, barely over the age of twenty, I thought that grace be beguiled then it is a dishonor to the living and to the dead. The room quieted down again, almost instantly. There was an eerie silence and in the hallway as well. I wondered what kind of circus was going on outside this small room but mainly I was focused on the young man across from me, I wasn’t as much worried about my life as I was this young man getting the help he needed, surely a healthy young man wouldn’t be holding a gun to his head or in his mouth.
He spoke sooner than I thought he would, and as he began to speak there were knocks at the door which he ignored. I honestly don’t know if he heard them or not.
“If you line up three marine snipers and tell them to aim at the kneecaps of three Iraqi’s standing in the middle of twelve other Iraqi’s by the fourth shot you can be sure that only one weapon if that will be aimed at the spot where shots are coming from. There’s more danger there defending these fuckers from themselves than there is checking out for your buddy beside you.”
He looked at the floor and followed an imaginary spot across the wall up to the door to the small glass window and put the gun back in his mouth. He did this slowly and I knew then he wasn’t serious about shooting himself, I had seen this kind of hysteria before in a standoff with a police officer in Georgia. Maybe he would feel more comfortable having someone to speak through, especially in this situation. After all this was Washington and they didn’t take to having their Military Industrial Establishment being bad mouthed in print. I could vouch for that personally.
One thing that started to occur to me was the fact that this had to be exploding across the screen of CNN by now taking the attention away from the Presidential campaign and Jack had to be somewhere outside trying to get in. I had no idea if my name had been released or if he knew I was involved but he did know I was coming here today. It wasn’t too long ago we had escaped a shootout in Iraq but this was different, Jack would be running towards the weapon in question.
By Chris Mansel
Part 1
Hospital tile and a sense of responsibility, that's what hit me when I first walked into a Veteran's hospital. I had been in triage situations in combat and hospital ships, Army hospitals in Germany, but this was different. This is the place where politicians come to be photographed and soldiers to be ignored. Any time day or night you can walk down the hallways and see blood trickling onto the floor or hear a voice crying out for help. After a while you start to wonder if all of the missing limbs aren't gathered somewhere in a room in the hospital, perhaps on another floor waiting to be reissued to another body.
It's not like the recruiting letters say, it's not like the news footage will show you. There are some who do want to return to battle but only to return to their buddies who they have fought beside for what seemed like an eternity, and there are some who want to go back and kill something, anyone. Their minds are twisted from fatigue and now their bodies deformed by gunfire or an explosion sit and drool staring at the television screen. They are never photographed with a visiting dignitary, that traffic is led away from the more troublesome rooms.
On my first visit there I saw a young Army private fall out of his room into the hallway screaming as his prosthetic limb gave way. He hit the floor hard and he swung his crutch at anyone who tried to help him up. He was crying uncontrollably. He started to shake and couldn’t stop his anger until another patient, a young black man with the lower half of his arm missing got down on the floor and took hold of him and held him as best he could until he calmed down. For a few minutes they were both cussing and yelling. The sounds they made went through the walls and out into the open, through the pressure built in the interstate by the hospital and into the neighborhoods they grew up in that would never except them back in the shape their mangled bodies were in now.
Napoleon Bonaparte said, "Go Sir, and don't forget that the world was made in six days. You can ask me for anything you like, except time." Strange words from a ruthless dictator but most of the patients in Veteran's Hospitals are here suffering from the words of ruthless dictators in one way or another. One day while touring the hospital and interviewing soldiers I came upon a young man who had lost his right arm and both legs. His demeanor was about what you'd expect. He greeted me with, "What in the hell are you and what in the hell do you want?"
I told him how sorry I was that he was in the condition he was in and I only wanted to ask him some questions. He snapped back, "Any goddamn answers you could want got blown off with my legs, man!" I backed out of the room quietly and started back down the hallway and heard him shouting back at me, "Hey, you giving up that easy, you just ain’t got it man, just ain't got it!" I stuck my head back in his doorway and he threw a glass of water at me just missing my head.
"Incoming!" He laughed loudly.
I said, "So I guess you want to talk, huh?"
His eyes cut through me as I entered the room; the rage in his voice was troubling. But it could be understood. He looked at my clothes and back up to my eyes and said, “Ever been there?”
I answered back, “Yea, four weeks ago as a matter of fact.”
“Four weeks ago…” He let the words fill the room before he spoke again. Embedded?
“No, we were doing freelance work.”
He lowered his brow, “We? You had someone else with you? Couldn’t handle it on you own?”
“Not exactly, my partner was there with me. He’s in town right now just not with me right now.”
“What he didn’t want to come in here and look at us?”
“What do you think?” I asked him this with a look to let him know the answer. We seemed to have wandered off the subject but I figured I would just let him talk. He was quiet for a few minutes and when he finally spoke again it wasn’t about my partner.
“You get hit, or Blackwater tuck you in at night like a good little mama’s bitch?”
I told him the story of Jack Random and myself and the family we helped to escape the private security forces, about the major and the redneck Army guy. He didn’t seem surprised.
He smiled and smiled a sad smile, “You think that was anything special?”
He reached down and lifted his blanket and scratched at his hip so nonchalantly that I don’t think he even realized he was doing it. The scar he revealed was hideous. I could tell he hadn’t been too long in recovery. I had seen wounds in his state before and I could tell that he had still to see several stages of draining of the wound which meant a few more times in surgery which meant more mental strain on his already fragile ego.
“Questions, like what questions? How I got my legs blown off, my arm, what? Tell me?” He asked impatiently.
I replied that I was curious about his experiences with his fellow soldiers and Iraqi civilians. I explained that I didn’t write for any major publication and I didn’t have an agenda.
He faced away from me and all the color went away from his face and said, “Well, I don’t know what to tell you man, I’m dead, just dead.” Tears began streaming down his face in a continuous flow to a point where they would not stop. He took a gun that I didn’t see and put it in his mouth and looked around the room and I thought he was going to pull the trigger. I jumped up from my chair and he fell out of the bed and I screamed: I just couldn’t help it. His face twisted with rage. I jumped back against the wall as several orderlies came to the door quickly and he took the gun out of his mouth and yelled for them to shut the fucking door.
His eyes were directly at me now and he put the gun back in his mouth and I must have gone pale because the orderlies at the small glass window in the door disappeared for a moment and came back with an older man who I guessed was a doctor I hadn’t seen before. He held up a piece of paper that had written on it a short message, “Do you have any medical conditions?”
For a moment I forgot about my safety and concerned myself with that short note. Here across from me sat a young man who had lost both his legs and one of his arms in the service of his country who now had a gun in his mouth and all they were worried about were getting sued by a journalist.
Saliva began to pour out of his mouth and the tears stopped. I felt so sorry for him but I was afraid to say anything. I had been in situations similar to this before and I had learned from experience to allow the individual to calm themselves down in their own time.
Outside the door I could hear the rustling and panic in the hallway. I could sense the sirens, the news vans, and every cliché you’ve ever seen. This was after all a Veteran’s Hospital in Washington D. C., the nation’s capital. The home of whoredom and the constant leaking ship of news that forever set sail on the putrid waters of suffering that wouldn’t for a second pass an opportunity to cover a story like this. I wondered to myself if the young man had thought past putting the gun in his mouth, if he had organized in his mind what he wanted to say or if he was so traumatized he could even see past the door of the room in his mind or with his eyes.
For a moment I looked over at him and he took the gun out of his mouth. He started to say something and raised the gun back up to his lips and squeezed the trigger a little, my eyes were so focused on his finger I could hardly breathe. But then he took the gun away from his mouth and rested it against the side of his head and said one word, “Gunship.”
There was a loud banging on the door and a voice from the other side said, “Marine you have a hostage in there, you’re a hostile force! Relinquish that weapon!” The Marine screamed out, “Perkins get the fuck away from here before I shoot you instead, asshole.”
As I watched this terrified young man, and he was young, barely over the age of twenty, I thought that grace be beguiled then it is a dishonor to the living and to the dead. The room quieted down again, almost instantly. There was an eerie silence and in the hallway as well. I wondered what kind of circus was going on outside this small room but mainly I was focused on the young man across from me, I wasn’t as much worried about my life as I was this young man getting the help he needed, surely a healthy young man wouldn’t be holding a gun to his head or in his mouth.
He spoke sooner than I thought he would, and as he began to speak there were knocks at the door which he ignored. I honestly don’t know if he heard them or not.
“If you line up three marine snipers and tell them to aim at the kneecaps of three Iraqi’s standing in the middle of twelve other Iraqi’s by the fourth shot you can be sure that only one weapon if that will be aimed at the spot where shots are coming from. There’s more danger there defending these fuckers from themselves than there is checking out for your buddy beside you.”
He looked at the floor and followed an imaginary spot across the wall up to the door to the small glass window and put the gun back in his mouth. He did this slowly and I knew then he wasn’t serious about shooting himself, I had seen this kind of hysteria before in a standoff with a police officer in Georgia. Maybe he would feel more comfortable having someone to speak through, especially in this situation. After all this was Washington and they didn’t take to having their Military Industrial Establishment being bad mouthed in print. I could vouch for that personally.
One thing that started to occur to me was the fact that this had to be exploding across the screen of CNN by now taking the attention away from the Presidential campaign and Jack had to be somewhere outside trying to get in. I had no idea if my name had been released or if he knew I was involved but he did know I was coming here today. It wasn’t too long ago we had escaped a shootout in Iraq but this was different, Jack would be running towards the weapon in question.
Friday, March 07, 2008
My Man in Canada: Chris Cook
O! Canada '08: Reviewing the Unrecognizable Nation
Written by Chris Cook
Friday, 07 March 2008
The Century has not so far been kind to those Canadians pining reminiscent for the days the country was a liberal democracy; relatively responsible actors on the world stage, the brokers of peace, guarantors of civility and fair governance in a dangerous, chaotic world.
To be fair to the successors of Brian Mulroney, the prime minister who hitched the nation's wagon to America's seemingly forever rising star through the Free Trade Agreement (FTA), destiny dealt them a crummy hand, but both the Jean Chretien and Paul Martin administrations went beyond the investment oriented FTA (later to morph, with the inclusion of Mexico, into the tripartite NAFTA agreement) "committing" Canada to both America's foreign policy objectives, and the military methods it employs to achieve them.
While more extreme than his predecessors, Stephen Harper's administration has merely accelerated the process begun by Mulroney, and furthered by the Liberal party, a process that has most dramatically manifested in the deaths of at least seventy-eight Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, and the killing and maiming and imprisoning of uncounted numbers of Afghanis.
Harper recently proposed legislation in Parliament to extend the country's entanglement in Afghanistan in the form of a promises made to NATO to continue past the already extended exit schedule of February 2009 through to the end of 2011. He did this with the complicity of the federal Liberals, whose support his minority government had to have.
The fact the majority of Canadians opposed Canada's involvement in what was ostensibly America's revenge for the 9/11 attacks, (based on the untried assumption Osama bin Laden planned and orchestrated the storied operation from his cave hideout in Afghanistan) before the launch of 'Operation Enduring Freedom' carried no freight with Jean Chretien's administration, just as majority opposition to the country's continued involvement means nothing to the current Harper regime. Canadians will continue to follow U.S. diktats in Afghanistan, and both Canadians and Afghanis will continue to pay the price for Ottawa's acquiescence.
The surrender of sovereign foreign policy is not limited to Afghanistan: Canada under Harper was first to express support for Israel's embargo against the rightfully elected Hamas government in Palestine, and uttered nary a word of protest against Israel's brutal and illegal bombing campaign over Lebanon in 2006. This support came even as one of the last Canadian peacekeepers attached to the United Nations was deliberately murdered, (with three colleagues) by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) while at his U.N. observation post in southern Lebanon.
Harper too had nothing to say about a Canadian family of seven murdered by a missile as they attempted to flee the Lebanon blitzkrieg in their car. On that occassion, Harper's team thought it more pertinent to question why the Lebanese-Canadians were visiting what was about to become a warzone, rather than demanding the IDF cease its killing spree, at least until the thousands of Canadians known to be in harm's way had a chance to evacuate.
If the official Canadian silence on Israel's serial war crimes in Palestine, crimes that translate as a measured, systematic genocide, were not dutiful enough for America and her racist client/colony in the Middle East, Stephen Harper's Conservatives too take pride of place, being among America's first and most eager accomplices in its self-proclaimed War on Terror, an essentially open-ended declaration of war on any and all standing between America and her perceived "vital interest."
The Canada/U.S. cooperation under arms is an arrangement about to get cosier in Afghanistan, where Canada's demand for a thousand more soldiers is being answered in part by France, which is expected to send as many as 700 more soldiers to relieve American forces operating in the east, enabling then a redeployment of those American soldiers to enjoin the battle at the heart of the resistance to the foreign occupation in southern Afghanistan, beside Canadian Forces.
Harper has proven the perfect pupil for neo-con Washington so far, but a breaking story, predictably dubbed in the press 'NAFTA-gate,' highlights his first failure in his masters' eyes.
In the hours before the much vaunted Clinton-Obama primaries in Ohio and Texas earlier this week, a whisp of scandal wafted south of the forty-ninth. Apparently, the war of words between the candidates, each claiming to audiences in delegate-rich, rust-belt Ohio to hating the NAFTA agreement, largely blamed for the demise of the state's manufacturing sector and loss with it of union jobs, more than the other is nothing but a con.
Agents for both camps had tipped nervous Canadian officials, telling them the NAFTA rhetoric was just that, reassuring the deal was in safe hands.
Curiously, it was the second revelation of Democrat duplicity, that of 'front-runner' Obama, that hit the airwaves. Now, Harper is being pilloried in the U.S. media, dragging down with him the reputation of the Prime Minister's office, and as Toronto Star columnist, Chantal Hebert pointed out on tonight's C.B.C. television broadcast of 'The National,' the administration's loose lips could also sink Canada's foreign services.
Hebert wonders if the Obama-embarrassing revelations would raise doubts in the minds of others who might otherwise confide in Canada, trusting their information would not lead the next evening news, either by political design, or through incompetence. This she argues could make their efforts extremely difficult and disadvantage the country.
It would be ironic if Stephen Harper, accomplished Canadian boot-lick, found himself on the wrong side of history; caught wrong-footed as the new political reality of an Obama presidency dawns.
But perhaps Hillary would smile upon her unwitting servant, who already granted one great service in a tight race needing winning. A second President Clinton would also continue Canada's newly understood role at America's side, as enacted by Harper, extending "The Mission" in Afghanistan still further, and assimilating the rest of the country's military, law enforcement, and political infrastructure.
It will doubtless make for an awkward moment for Stephen Harper, should President Barak Obama come to call. That is assuming Harper has a year left in his rule.
The Chuck Cadman affair is not going away. In that lurid case Harper emissaries offer death bed conversion to the terminally ill independent MP Cadman in exchange for a vote in the House that could bring down the erstwhile Liberals of Paul Martin.
The operatives are said to have offered an insurance policy arrangement allegedly worth up to a million dollars for Cadman's widow, (herself now the official candidate for Harper's conservatives in her late husband's riding).
Though a recording of Stephen Harper admitting he knew beforehand of the plan to make the offer to Cadman, an offer the Liberals insist is a bribe has aired nationwide, Harper does not admit to either authoring, or authorizing the plan. He does however admit to knowing about, and doing nothing to stop their plan - an illegal plan, if the Liberals are proved correct.
That makes Mr. Harper guilty of conspiracy to bribe a public official. Considering the seriousness of the charge, and the dogged grip with which the opposition has taken up the allegation, (Liberal heavy, former hockey star, Ken Dryden going so far as repeating his charge against Harper for the cameras word for word outside House of Commons' slander protections) the Cadman affair could well bring on the election Harper has been spoiling for.
Should Harper and his Republican-like Tories survive the year, or be replaced by the equally servile Liberal party, Canada in 2009 will resemble nothing more than it does today; a rump-nation, pulled along by a shortening leash; made to devote its blood and treasure in the service of a tyrannical master; made to savage the rights and freedoms at home it purportedly fights wars to instill abroad.
This is not the Canada I remember.
This is not the Canada any Canadian can remember.
[Note: Chris Cook is an editor-writer for Pacific Free Press of Canada.]
Written by Chris Cook
Friday, 07 March 2008
The Century has not so far been kind to those Canadians pining reminiscent for the days the country was a liberal democracy; relatively responsible actors on the world stage, the brokers of peace, guarantors of civility and fair governance in a dangerous, chaotic world.
To be fair to the successors of Brian Mulroney, the prime minister who hitched the nation's wagon to America's seemingly forever rising star through the Free Trade Agreement (FTA), destiny dealt them a crummy hand, but both the Jean Chretien and Paul Martin administrations went beyond the investment oriented FTA (later to morph, with the inclusion of Mexico, into the tripartite NAFTA agreement) "committing" Canada to both America's foreign policy objectives, and the military methods it employs to achieve them.
While more extreme than his predecessors, Stephen Harper's administration has merely accelerated the process begun by Mulroney, and furthered by the Liberal party, a process that has most dramatically manifested in the deaths of at least seventy-eight Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, and the killing and maiming and imprisoning of uncounted numbers of Afghanis.
Harper recently proposed legislation in Parliament to extend the country's entanglement in Afghanistan in the form of a promises made to NATO to continue past the already extended exit schedule of February 2009 through to the end of 2011. He did this with the complicity of the federal Liberals, whose support his minority government had to have.
The fact the majority of Canadians opposed Canada's involvement in what was ostensibly America's revenge for the 9/11 attacks, (based on the untried assumption Osama bin Laden planned and orchestrated the storied operation from his cave hideout in Afghanistan) before the launch of 'Operation Enduring Freedom' carried no freight with Jean Chretien's administration, just as majority opposition to the country's continued involvement means nothing to the current Harper regime. Canadians will continue to follow U.S. diktats in Afghanistan, and both Canadians and Afghanis will continue to pay the price for Ottawa's acquiescence.
The surrender of sovereign foreign policy is not limited to Afghanistan: Canada under Harper was first to express support for Israel's embargo against the rightfully elected Hamas government in Palestine, and uttered nary a word of protest against Israel's brutal and illegal bombing campaign over Lebanon in 2006. This support came even as one of the last Canadian peacekeepers attached to the United Nations was deliberately murdered, (with three colleagues) by the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) while at his U.N. observation post in southern Lebanon.
Harper too had nothing to say about a Canadian family of seven murdered by a missile as they attempted to flee the Lebanon blitzkrieg in their car. On that occassion, Harper's team thought it more pertinent to question why the Lebanese-Canadians were visiting what was about to become a warzone, rather than demanding the IDF cease its killing spree, at least until the thousands of Canadians known to be in harm's way had a chance to evacuate.
If the official Canadian silence on Israel's serial war crimes in Palestine, crimes that translate as a measured, systematic genocide, were not dutiful enough for America and her racist client/colony in the Middle East, Stephen Harper's Conservatives too take pride of place, being among America's first and most eager accomplices in its self-proclaimed War on Terror, an essentially open-ended declaration of war on any and all standing between America and her perceived "vital interest."
The Canada/U.S. cooperation under arms is an arrangement about to get cosier in Afghanistan, where Canada's demand for a thousand more soldiers is being answered in part by France, which is expected to send as many as 700 more soldiers to relieve American forces operating in the east, enabling then a redeployment of those American soldiers to enjoin the battle at the heart of the resistance to the foreign occupation in southern Afghanistan, beside Canadian Forces.
Harper has proven the perfect pupil for neo-con Washington so far, but a breaking story, predictably dubbed in the press 'NAFTA-gate,' highlights his first failure in his masters' eyes.
In the hours before the much vaunted Clinton-Obama primaries in Ohio and Texas earlier this week, a whisp of scandal wafted south of the forty-ninth. Apparently, the war of words between the candidates, each claiming to audiences in delegate-rich, rust-belt Ohio to hating the NAFTA agreement, largely blamed for the demise of the state's manufacturing sector and loss with it of union jobs, more than the other is nothing but a con.
Agents for both camps had tipped nervous Canadian officials, telling them the NAFTA rhetoric was just that, reassuring the deal was in safe hands.
Curiously, it was the second revelation of Democrat duplicity, that of 'front-runner' Obama, that hit the airwaves. Now, Harper is being pilloried in the U.S. media, dragging down with him the reputation of the Prime Minister's office, and as Toronto Star columnist, Chantal Hebert pointed out on tonight's C.B.C. television broadcast of 'The National,' the administration's loose lips could also sink Canada's foreign services.
Hebert wonders if the Obama-embarrassing revelations would raise doubts in the minds of others who might otherwise confide in Canada, trusting their information would not lead the next evening news, either by political design, or through incompetence. This she argues could make their efforts extremely difficult and disadvantage the country.
It would be ironic if Stephen Harper, accomplished Canadian boot-lick, found himself on the wrong side of history; caught wrong-footed as the new political reality of an Obama presidency dawns.
But perhaps Hillary would smile upon her unwitting servant, who already granted one great service in a tight race needing winning. A second President Clinton would also continue Canada's newly understood role at America's side, as enacted by Harper, extending "The Mission" in Afghanistan still further, and assimilating the rest of the country's military, law enforcement, and political infrastructure.
It will doubtless make for an awkward moment for Stephen Harper, should President Barak Obama come to call. That is assuming Harper has a year left in his rule.
The Chuck Cadman affair is not going away. In that lurid case Harper emissaries offer death bed conversion to the terminally ill independent MP Cadman in exchange for a vote in the House that could bring down the erstwhile Liberals of Paul Martin.
The operatives are said to have offered an insurance policy arrangement allegedly worth up to a million dollars for Cadman's widow, (herself now the official candidate for Harper's conservatives in her late husband's riding).
Though a recording of Stephen Harper admitting he knew beforehand of the plan to make the offer to Cadman, an offer the Liberals insist is a bribe has aired nationwide, Harper does not admit to either authoring, or authorizing the plan. He does however admit to knowing about, and doing nothing to stop their plan - an illegal plan, if the Liberals are proved correct.
That makes Mr. Harper guilty of conspiracy to bribe a public official. Considering the seriousness of the charge, and the dogged grip with which the opposition has taken up the allegation, (Liberal heavy, former hockey star, Ken Dryden going so far as repeating his charge against Harper for the cameras word for word outside House of Commons' slander protections) the Cadman affair could well bring on the election Harper has been spoiling for.
Should Harper and his Republican-like Tories survive the year, or be replaced by the equally servile Liberal party, Canada in 2009 will resemble nothing more than it does today; a rump-nation, pulled along by a shortening leash; made to devote its blood and treasure in the service of a tyrannical master; made to savage the rights and freedoms at home it purportedly fights wars to instill abroad.
This is not the Canada I remember.
This is not the Canada any Canadian can remember.
[Note: Chris Cook is an editor-writer for Pacific Free Press of Canada.]
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
POSTSCRIPT: GENDER VS. RACE
Before we leave the subject of race versus gender in presidential politics, consider this: On the world stage, there have been numerous women elected and appointed heads of state, including the current presidents or prime ministers of Ireland, Germany, Finland, the Philippines, Switzerland, Chile, Liberia, India and Argentina.
To my knowledge, there is not and has never been an elected or appointed head of state of African descent in any non-African nation.
Gloria Steinem may consider gender the greater obstacle but world history would suggest otherwise.
Like universal non-profit health care, electing a woman president of the United States of America would secure a place in the growing community of enlightened nations but electing an African American would be entirely new ground.
Electing a woman would be catching up to the rest of the democratic world. By electing an African American, the rest of the world would have to catch up to us.
Jazz.
To my knowledge, there is not and has never been an elected or appointed head of state of African descent in any non-African nation.
Gloria Steinem may consider gender the greater obstacle but world history would suggest otherwise.
Like universal non-profit health care, electing a woman president of the United States of America would secure a place in the growing community of enlightened nations but electing an African American would be entirely new ground.
Electing a woman would be catching up to the rest of the democratic world. By electing an African American, the rest of the world would have to catch up to us.
Jazz.
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Jake's Word: Election Analysis
In 2008 our votes in the primaries will be more important than in the general election.
The level of complicity, intentional or not, between the current Bush war policy and the insurgency is disturbing. Perhaps the various factions have decided to restrain themselves in order to wait out the change of government in the U.S. or may return to frequent attacks next year in order to try to shape the US election. They may also be using the time to work out new coalitions against the current Iraqi government and then attempt a political coup rather than a violent one. We aren't likely to get solid information from any of the major news sources. Journalism in Iraq seems to be whatever is delivered by runners to journalists bunkered in relatively safe hotels. It seems quite certain though that nothing has been resolved.
The Republicans want to diminish Iraq as a campaign issue. If the economy doesn't slide into recession that might be enough to get a Republican candidate elected since Clinton only represents Republican lite. Absent a raging war or a recession Gulianni or Romney may appear to be a better choice to a thin majority. Either way, the American people lose. Its just a matter of which flavor of defeat you prefer.
Perhaps a strong tug to the left by voting for Kucinich in the primaries would remind Clinton that she will need those voters to win and to govern. That seems to be the best we can do at the moment.
Jake Berry
The level of complicity, intentional or not, between the current Bush war policy and the insurgency is disturbing. Perhaps the various factions have decided to restrain themselves in order to wait out the change of government in the U.S. or may return to frequent attacks next year in order to try to shape the US election. They may also be using the time to work out new coalitions against the current Iraqi government and then attempt a political coup rather than a violent one. We aren't likely to get solid information from any of the major news sources. Journalism in Iraq seems to be whatever is delivered by runners to journalists bunkered in relatively safe hotels. It seems quite certain though that nothing has been resolved.
The Republicans want to diminish Iraq as a campaign issue. If the economy doesn't slide into recession that might be enough to get a Republican candidate elected since Clinton only represents Republican lite. Absent a raging war or a recession Gulianni or Romney may appear to be a better choice to a thin majority. Either way, the American people lose. Its just a matter of which flavor of defeat you prefer.
Perhaps a strong tug to the left by voting for Kucinich in the primaries would remind Clinton that she will need those voters to win and to govern. That seems to be the best we can do at the moment.
Jake Berry
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