Here's a couple of items from the Center For Media and Democracy illustrating what the goals , aims and policies of the American Empire really are as represented by American corporations and the rich and powerful and their political stooges . They may pay lip service to freedom and human rights and Democracy but this is not what they actually which to achieve. The rich and powerful and their true-believing worshippers and followers desire to be richer and more powerful while convincing the citizenry through propaganda that they the people are in fact free and are living the " Good Life ". Meanwhile the corporations act as gate-Keepers for the Chinese Government and so police their employees and the Internet to crush all signs of dissent. In how many other countries do these and other companies work as partners with the various despotic, authoritarian or tyrannical & brutal and deadly governments . Without the aid of the American government and Western Corporations in their complicity with these regimes many of these regimes would fall apart and be crushed by those countries citizenry. But this doesn't happen very often since it is not in America's or the corporation's interest. When such ruthless regimes are overthrown as in Chile, Guatemala, Argentina, Iran or Iraq etc. the Americans are always there to re-establish the old regime or a different but more suitable anti-democratic corrupt and brutal but of course pro-authoritarian/ pro-business/ pro-American Regime .
PAX Americana: Conquest Not Freedom
Center For Media and Democracy /Jun 17, 2008
How Not to Win Friends and Influence People/Source: National Security Archive, June 13, 2008
"The U.S. military has long sought an agreement with Baghdad that gives American forces virtually unfettered freedom of action, casting into doubt the Bush administration's current claims that their demands are more limited," concludes the National Security Archive's analysis of recently declassified documents. In a 2003 cable, then-Coalition Provisional Authority head Paul Bremer wrote that any agreement with the future government of Iraq must give U.S. forces authority "to detain, intern, and interrogate"; "to retain custody of current POWs / detainees / internees"; and "unlimited authority to conduct military operations." Bremer added that U.S. personnel, including military contractors, "must be accorded ... full criminal immunity and immunity from civil process for official acts." In related news, the Wikileaks website has published what it says is "a sensitive U.S. military counterinsurgency manual." The document points to U.S. involvement in El Salvador and elsewhere in describing how to control foreign populations. Suggested tactics include martial law, censorship, psychological operations, supporting "civilian self-defense forces" and persuading "individuals among the general populace to become informants," by using as motives "civic-mindedness, patriotism, fear, punishment avoidance, gratitude, revenge or jealousy, financial rewards."
Bush , Cheney , McCain & America Companies envious of Chinese Model for Closing Down Dissent
Center For Media and Democracy :China's Online Persuaders/
Source: BusinessWeek, June 12, 2008
China's webspace is infamous for censorship, but increasingly, public relations firms there are helping their clients "manage" online conversations. China-based firms such as Daqi, Chinese Web Union and CIC "charge $500 - $25,000 monthly to monitor postings and squelch negative information or to create positive buzz," reports BusinessWeek. Their clients include Nike, PepsiCo, McDonald's, Toyota and L'Oreal. Chinese Web Union (CWU) "pays thousands of people to write nice things about clients, and it compensates forum leaders who spread positive information and quash bad publicity." For Subaru, the firm helped manage criticism that the company's Chinese name "sounds like 'death to the Eighth Route army,' which was perceived as insulting to a Chinese unit that battled Japan in World War II. CWU urged forum leaders to delete negative comments, then asked its writers to post positive news about Subaru." Daqi and CIC "acknowledge pampering online opinion leaders," including by inviting them to events "where they can test and discuss new products."
Anyway John McCain proves he is as tough and unfeeling as the Bush/Cheney tyranny . All that matters is power and the spread and defence of the American Empire. The concerns of other peoples and nations are not as important as those of America and its people. Like Bush and Cheney McCain believes if America needs oil or whatever it will get it by hook or crook . In the end they believe as God's chosen nation they have been given the right to do as they please and to take what they need or want. Being blessed by God or Destiny or Fortune(a ) whatever they do is justified and permissible . The American people must be convinced to sacrifice everything for the betterment of the Empire and for the Rich and Powerful who have been blessed by God .
Not That Important when troops will return from Iraq - Troops not of importance as long as Bush's legacy is kept in tact
McCain will fight to the last willing or unwilling American soldier
Physical and mental health of troops not that important
Olbermann Special Comment McCain on Troops Coming Home pt.1
Freedoms fought for by America's Founding Fathers Merely Quaint
Mccain and Bush / Cheney Regime claim notions such as Habeus Corpus or right to a fair trial or other such rights are not as important as security and fighting terrorists. In a time of perpetual war individual citizens must relinquish their rights. Or as we see below America has an empire to build maintain and defend which must be protected by those who are willing to do that which is necessary. So torture , intensive bombing of cities and napalming civilians to terrorize and keep them under control is they believe necessary .
Meanwhile the Americans in Iraq stay in their relatively safe and luxurious Megabases and in the famed Emerald City with all the comforts of home . These Megabases have a steady supply of water and electricity and food and fuel while much of Iraq is till without clean water or reliable sources of electricity. They have their MacDonalds and WalMarts while the Iraqi people do without the necessities of life. The Iraqi people live in a constant state of fear of American troops and insurgents and death squads and lawless competing gangs . Ah well the conquerors believe the native population being barbaric and uncivilized are used to such privations.
McCain Takes Gitmo Ruling Personally/Why Does GOP Candidate Scorn Supreme Court's Affirmation Of Right Of Habeus Corpus?
June 15, 2008
(CBS) John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, told a crowd of supporters in New Jersey Friday that the Supreme Court’s latest Guantanamo Bay ruling is “one of the worst decisions in the history of this country.”
Why would the normally stoic senator become so hyperbolic about a ruling that, at its essence, strengthens the vitality of the “Great Writ” of habeas corpus - a bedrock constitutional right?
There are several reasons. As a political matter, McCain clearly understands that in his quest to enchant the hard-right wing of the Grand Old Party, he must rail upon the Supreme Court whenever it happens to disagree with the Bush Administration on legal aspects of the war on terrorism.
This is why, just a few weeks ago, McCain delivered a speech that hammered the federal judiciary, sweeping away any lingering notion that he intends to govern as a moderate on legal policy and priorities.
So, whether or not McCain really believes what he says, it is good politics (read: inaccurate and unfair) to declare that the Court just sided with the terrorists over the President when five Justices ruled that the terror suspects detained in Cuba may challenge their detentions in our civilian courts.
Contrary to the angry candidate’s remarks, last week’s Boumediene ruling is not on a par with the Court’s 1857 Dred Scott decision that tagged slaves as “property;” its 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision that endorsed the “separate but equal” doctrine; or its Korematsu v. United States decision that affirmed the detention of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
In fact, the recent ruling on detainee rights will be revered, not reviled, by future generations, who will study the first decade following the terror attacks on America with a curious mix of regret and sadness about lost opportunities, legal and otherwise, that hampered our collective response.
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and as for the abuse of detainees it was and is widespread from Iraq to Gitmo to Afghanistan - Once the American government under George W. Bush decided and proclaimed that all combatants were to be deemed as being outside the protection of American Law or of International Law and the Geneva Conventions
Monday, June 16, 2008/U.S. abuse of detainees was routine at Afghanistan bases By Tom Lasseter | McClatchy Newspapers
KABUL, Afghanistan — American soldiers herded the detainees into holding pens of razor-sharp concertina wire, as if they were corralling livestock.
The guards kicked, kneed and punched many of the men until they collapsed in pain. U.S. troops shackled and dragged other detainees to small isolation rooms, then hung them by their wrists from chains dangling from the wire mesh ceiling.
Former guards and detainees whom McClatchy interviewed said Bagram was a center of systematic brutality for at least 20 months, starting in late 2001. Yet the soldiers responsible have escaped serious punishment.
The public outcry in the United States and abroad has focused on detainee abuse at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, but sadistic violence first appeared at Bagram, north of Kabul, and at a similar U.S. internment camp at Kandahar Airfield in southern Afghanistan.
The eight-month McClatchy investigation found a pattern of abuse that continued for years. The abuse of detainees at Bagram has been reported by U.S. media organizations, in particular The New York Times, which broke several developments in the story. But the extent of the mistreatment, and that it eclipsed the alleged abuse at Guantanamo, hasn't previously been revealed.
Guards said they routinely beat their prisoners to retaliate for al Qaida's 9-11 attacks, unaware that the vast majority of the detainees had little or no connection to al Qaida.
Former detainees at Bagram and Kandahar said they were beaten regularly. Of the 41 former Bagram detainees whom McClatchy interviewed, 28 said that guards or interrogators had assaulted them. Only eight of those men said they were beaten at Guantanamo Bay.
Because President Bush loosened or eliminated the rules governing the treatment of so-called enemy combatants, however, few U.S. troops have been disciplined under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and no serious punishments have been administered, even in the cases of two detainees who died after American guards beat them.
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Empire and the End of Freedom
The Greatest Story Never Told
Finally, the U.S. Mega-Bases in Iraq Make the News By Tom Engelhardt
16/06/08 "Tom Dispatch" -- -
In fact, in the last five-plus years, untold billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on the construction and upgrading of those bases. When asked back in the fall of 2003, only months after Baghdad fell to U.S. troops, Lt. Col. David Holt, the Army engineer then "tasked with facilities development" in Iraq, proudly indicated that "several billion dollars" had already been invested in those fast-rising bases. Even then, he was suitably amazed, commenting that "the numbers are staggering." Imagine what he might have said, barely two and a half years later, when the U.S. reportedly had 106 bases, mega to micro, all across the country.
By now, billions have evidently gone into single massive mega-bases like the U.S. air base at Balad, about 60 miles north of Baghdad. It's a "16-square-mile fortress," housing perhaps 40,000 U.S. troops, contractors, special ops types, and Defense Department employees. As the Washington Post's Tom Ricks, who visited Balad back in 2006, pointed out -- in a rare piece on one of our mega-bases -- it's essentially "a small American town smack in the middle of the most hostile part of Iraq." Back then, air traffic at the base was already being compared to Chicago's O'Hare International or London's Heathrow -- and keep in mind that Balad has been steadily upgraded ever since to support an "air surge" that, unlike the President's 2007 "surge" of 30,000 ground troops, has yet to end.
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Joby Warrick writing for the Washington Post argues there is ample proof that the Pentagon early on in the war on terror decided on the use of tougher interrogation methods aka torture techniques though when America tortures it is justifiable because it is in the name of freedom, justice and the American way. Like the arrogant empire builders before them they believe they need to by force if necessary teach the natives to bring them its /their superiour culture or simply steal their natural resources and use the conquered peoples as cheap labor .
Even Barack Obama seems at times to blame the iraqi people as the creators of their own misfortune. This has little to do with the reality in Iraq. And Obama too is willing to attack Iran for some perceived wrong.
It appears to me that Americans believe Iran has done some great evil to America. But the anxiety is really based on the events which took place when the Iranian people rose up against the American backed butcher and tyrant the Shaw of Iran and the taking of American hostages which was seen as an insult and a direct attack on America for which the American people are still seeking revenge. But given the history of America and Iran it is little wonder that there is mistrust of American governments . It was the Americans who sponsored the Iraqi government in its illegal unjustified war against Iran. But don't tell Americans that it does not fit with their deluded ,erroneous, arrogant view of their own country and its mythologized history.
Report Questions Pentagon Accounts/Officials Looked Into Interrogation Methods Early On/By Joby Warrick/Tuesday, June 17, 2008
A Senate investigation has concluded that top Pentagon officials began assembling lists of harsh interrogation techniques in the summer of 2002 for use on detainees at Guantanamo Bay and that those officials later cited memos from field commanders to suggest that the proposals originated far down the chain of command, according to congressional sources briefed on the findings.
Haynes and other senior administration officials also visited Guantanamo Bay in September 2002 to "talk about techniques," said one congressional official. Also on the trip was David S. Addington, chief of staff to Vice President Cheney.
The Guantanamo Bay visit and the effort to compile interrogation tactics appear to show that Pentagon officials were moving toward a formal policy on interrogation before military commanders at the detention camp requested special measures, the officials said. However, top military officers objected to the proposals in a series of memos in November 2002, much earlier than previously reported, congressional investigators said. In early 2003, Rumsfeld formally authorized the techniques for use at Guantanamo Bay.
and so it goes,
GORD.
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