Friday, November 04, 2011

Occupy Oakland General Strike A Beginning & Injured Iraq Vet Scott Olsen Advises Non-Violence & Libya: Gun Boat Diplomacy The U.S. Fog Of Propaganda

UPDATE: 8:40 PM
Has there ever been an empire that didn't tell itself and the world that it was unlike all other empires, that its mission was not to plunder and control but to enlighten and liberate?  Quote by William Blum referring to the American Empire.
I am torn between the hope of the Occupy movement and the untold suffering being caused by the Ever-Hungry  American Proto-Fascist War Machine that never seems satisfied.
Obama is just the newest American despot who wants to rule the world to make the world a better place for Unfettered de-regulated American Corporate Citizens-(SCOTUS Citizens United)
#OWS update
Even journalists are treated as the enemy by the police in Oakland and elsewhere.
So they are beginning to attack the press thereby undermining the freedom of the press.
Gaddafi not the monster that President Obama and the media made him out to be. See video De-Demonizing Gaddafi
And Why was Gaddafi tortured & then summarily executed
And why does Hillary Clinton view his brutal death as laughable.
American do like blowing things up and murdering innocent people especially of another race or color or religion culture-
Knowing America's history of Gun-Boat diplomacy and its love of carpet-bombing and burning villages from those of Native American to the villages of Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan or Pakistan or Libya why do so many kow tow to the Americans
The revolution will not be realized until the US knows its place and keeps its ever-hungry war machine within its own borders.


Journalist Susie Cagel incarcerated for 14 hours by Oakland Police
November 04, 2011
So much for the freedom of the press in America
But it was bound to happen since most of the Media didn't protest when they were told that the US military had no responsibility to protect journalist on the battlefield or even in luxury hotels in Baghdad.
Instead the Press gave up their rights guranteed by International Law and allowed themselves to be EMBEDDED  with the military so every word every picture could be subject to censorship.
Journalist Susie Cagle Arrested in #OccupyOakland Raid by Tina Dupuy
ABC7News via Crooks and Liars.

#OWS Injured Vet Scott Olsen Urges Non-violence in the Face of Police Brutality November 2, 2011 via Crooks and Liars

Countdown's Keith Olbermann opened this segment with some pictures of Wednesday night's march and general strike at . Meanwhile in New York, veterans marched on lower Manhattan today to honor Scott Olsen, the veteran who was injured during the Occupy Oakland protest with a tear-gas canister.


Keith also talked to Olsen's friend and fellow Iraq War veteran, Joshua Sheperd, who read a text from he received from Olsen not long before the show:


SHEPERD: What kind of pie? Which it goes along... occupy. I see the success there. Keep it up. Non-violence in the face of police brutality.


Sheperd also discussed whether the Occupy Wall Street might be an opportunity to draw more attention to our military veterans and their issues who are also struggling terribly in this economy after serving their country overseas.



Noam Chomsky is pleased by the Occupy movement's growth and that it appears to have staying power. He notes that there is a difference with today's financial crisis compared to the Great Depression. Even at the worst times in the Great depression there was always at least a glimmer of hope that things would get better but today there seems more of a sense of hopelessness and fear that things will not get better in America or in other Western Nations because the game as it were is rigged against the average citizen. It is because of this fear and hopelessness that is in fact fueling the Occupy movement because the other channels for change such as elections are not working . President Obama was elected by a vast majority of Americans because he promised not just a few changes in the laws but a change in the way that things are done in Washington or on Wall Street but he has failed his most earnest supporters so this movement is seen as the best hope for average citizens to throw a wrench into the machinery of Business as usual .

Noam Chomsky Speaks to Occupy: If We Want a Chance at a Decent Future, the Movement Here and Around the World Must Grow by Noam Chomsky at Alternet.org November 1, 2011


In a speech to Occupy Boston, the linguist and icon hailed the "unprecedented" first weeks of OWS. He cautioned protesters to build and educate first, strike later.


...The Occupy movement really is an exciting development. In fact, it's spectacular. It's unprecedented; there's never been anything like it that I can think of. If the bonds and associations that are being established at these remarkable events can be sustained through a long, hard period ahead -- because victories don't come quickly-- this could turn out to be a very significant moment in American history.


The fact that the demonstrations are unprecedented is quite appropriate. It is an unprecedented era -- not just this moment -- but actually since the 1970s. The 1970s began a major turning point in American history. For centuries, since the country began, it had been a developing society with ups and downs. But the general progress was toward wealth and industrialization and development...there was a pretty constant expectation that it's going to go on like this. That was true even in very dark times.


For instance as Amy Dean puts it :

Occupy Wall Street and America's Democratic Tradition by Amy Dean via alternet.org, October 27, 2011

For decades, we have focused on extending liberty in the realm of the marketplace, but this has come at the expense of democratic equality.

Americans are not only feeling a financial pinch; they’re feeling disenfranchised. We have experienced cuts to the welfare state for decades. But what we saw in Wisconsin and other state-level fights in early 2011 was that when Republican governors coupled further rollbacks in social services and decreases in education funding with attacks on some of the few remaining middle-class jobs in America, it created a level of insecurity that drove people—in numbers rarely seen—to voice their concerns outside of an electoral framework. These people used protests because the more traditional channels of democracy seemed blocked to all except those who could afford high-priced lobbyists. The same lack of democratic equality gave rise to Occupy Wall Street, and it will continue to motivate protests for as long as it persists.

 The brutal murder of Gaddafi is viewed by the Western media as righteous but what it proves is that the US and NATO have lost their moral bearings. The NATO/American carpet bombing of Libya showed a complete disregard for the safety of the Libyan civilian population. NATO once again with America's backing has committed more War Crimes and crimes against humanity to add to its disturbing record in Aghanistan /Pakistan war.
 So what this appears to be is not a matter of the Fog of War but rather I believe it to be the Fog of Propaganda and a disingenuous self-righteousness on the part of the United States and other European nations.
The Fog of Propaganda & Media Disinformation

The politicians and the military establishment often invoke the notion of the Fog Of War for the unintended deaths of civilians .
The killing of civilians is dismissed under the euphemism of "colateral damage" as if this makes up for the loss of somebody's loved ones. Even the torture and brutal murder of Gaddafi is excused by the invcation of the Fog of War.
Then again it is not surprising that Gaddafi would be treated in this brutal uncivilized manner when American forces are involved in any military operation whether as giving air cover or having as it were "boots on the ground". The laws of war and common decency play no part in America's expansion of its Empire.

It is not so much that the problem is the Fog Of War in determining what is actually taking place on the ground in any conflict but rather the dense Fog of Propaganda including fabricated intelligence and lies and media manipulation by those in power.

To justify the military intervention in Libya President Obama, Joe biden , and Hillary Clinton and the elite which they support and defend fabricated intelligence and lied to the public using the quisling amoral Mainstream media which drowns out all other views which might question the government and the military's actions.

In the US war on Libya the propaganda and lies convinced many that Gaddafi was evil and a threat to the West. Per usual Gaddafi like Saddam and others needed to be portrayed not just as wrong but as being downright evil so the USA could say that they were intervening in Libya not for the natural resources or to establish a friendly pro-Western nation to begin America's next agenda of controlling most of the nations in Africa but rather that this was just another incident in which America was standing up for human rights and democracy and that it was doing so because that's America's duty. This has been the preferred narrative throughout American history in which Americans are seen as being the good guys.

America's duty we are told is to bring civilization to those who are in their view barbaric and uncivilized whether it is the uncivilied American Native peoples or the peoples of Mexico or the Carribean , Haiti or Cuba or the Dominican Republic or Honduras or Nicaragua the Philippines or the Iranians or Hawaiians or the Iraqis or Afghans or the Vietnamese all we are told needed America's help and military intervention .

In order to invade and conquer Iraq the Bush Cheney Regime revved up its propaganda machine to convince the world that Saddam was a major threat to world peace and a threat to America's security. The lies and deception of the propagandists were then without any skepticism or fact checking sold to the public by the Mainstream Media.

The US government under Obama once again revved up the propaganda machine to convince the Western nations ' leaders and the public that Gaddafi was an imminent threat to neighboring nations and that he was brutaly oppressing the people of Libya . The American government and establishment including the 1% did not approve of Gaddafi's socialist leanings ie free education, free Health Care etc. but they became more alarmed by the fact that Gaddafi was creating a unified Africa which would in the view of the Americans and other Western Nations undermine their control of the resources and the peoples of Africa. So Gaddafi had to go.

It Doesn't Matter To Them If It's Untrue. It's a Higher Truth.By William Blum via information Clearing House November 3, 2011

"We came, we saw, he died."
— US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton,
giggling, as she spoke of the depraved murder of Moammar Gaddafi


November 03, 2011 "Information Clearing House" -- Imagine Osama bin Laden or some other Islamic leader speaking of 9-11: "We came, we saw, 3,000 died ... ha- ha."


Clinton and her partners-in-crime in NATO can also have a good laugh at how they deceived the world. The destruction of Libya, the reduction of a modern welfare state to piles of rubble, to ghost towns, the murder of thousands ... this tragedy was the culmination of a series of falsehoods spread by the Libyan rebels, the Western powers, and Qatar (through its television station, al-Jazeera) — from the declared imminence of a "bloodbath" in rebel-held Benghazi if the West didn't intervene to stories of government helicopter-gunships and airplanes spraying gunfire onto large numbers of civilians to tales of Viagra-induced mass rapes by Gaddafi's army. (This last fable was proclaimed at the United Nations by the American Ambassador, as if young soldiers needed Viagra to get it up!)1


The New York Times (March 22) observed:


... the rebels feel no loyalty to the truth in shaping their propaganda, claiming nonexistent battlefield victories, asserting they were still fighting in a key city days after it fell to Qaddafi forces, and making vastly inflated claims of his barbaric behavior.


The Los Angeles Times (April 7) added this about the rebels' media operation:


It's not exactly fair and balanced media. In fact, as [its editor] helpfully pointed out, there are four inviolate rules of coverage on the two rebel radio stations, TV station and newspaper:


No pro-[Qaddafi] reportage or commentary
No mention of a civil war. (The Libyan people, east and west, are unified in a war against a totalitarian regime.)
No discussion of tribes or tribalism. (There is only one tribe: Libya.)
No references to Al Qaeda or Islamic extremism. (That's [Qaddafi's] propaganda.)
The Libyan government undoubtedly spouted its share of misinformation, but it was the rebels' trail of lies, both of omission and commission, which was used by the UN Security Council to justify its vote for "humanitarian" intervention; followed in Act Three by unrelenting NATO/US bombs and drone missiles, day after day, week after week, month after month; you can't get much more humanitarian than that. If the people of Libya prior to the NATO/US bombardment had been offered a referendum on it, can it be imagined that they would have endorsed it?


In fact, it appears rather likely that a majority of Libyans supported Gaddafi. How else could the government have held off the most powerful military forces in the world for more than seven months? Before NATO and the US laid waste to the land, Libya had the highest life expectancy, lowest infant mortality, and highest UN Human Development Index in Africa. During the first few months of the civil war, giant rallies were held in support of the Libyan leader.

If Gaddafi had been less oppressive of his political opposition over the years and had made some gestures of accommodation to them during the Arab Spring, the benevolent side of his regime might still be keeping him in power, although the world has plentiful evidence making it plain that the Western powers are not particularly concerned about political oppression except to use as an excuse for intervention when they want to; indeed, government files seized in Tripoli during the fighting show that the CIA and British intelligence worked with the Libyan government in tracking down dissidents, turning them over to Libya, and taking part in interrogations.
In any event, many of the rebels had a religious motive for opposing the government and played dominant roles within the rebel army; previously a number of them had fought against the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq. 
The new Libyan regime promptly announced that Islamic sharia law would be the "basic source" of legislation, and laws that contradict "the teachings of Islam" would be nullified; there would also be a reinstitution of polygamy; the Muslim holy book, theQuran, allows men up to four wives.
Thus, just as in Afghanistan in the 1980-90s, the United States has supported Islamic militants fighting against a secular government. The American government has imprisoned many people as "terrorists" in the United States for a lot less. 


American history going back to its to its insurgency against the British Empire and even two centuries previous to that  is rife with examples of unwanted unnecessary interventions in the affairs of other nations or peoples from slaughtering in Genocidal madness Native Americans to Hawaiians to  Filipinos to the Vietnamese to the Iraqis & Afghans under the false flag of human rights and democracy and spreading  Christianity  when in reality it is just America being a bully throwing its weight around and insisting that its world view must be accepted as the only one that matters. As William Blum continues:


The worldwide eternal belief that American foreign policy has a good side that can be appealed to
On April 6, 2011 Moammar Gaddafi wrote a letter to President Obama, in which he said:
"We have been hurt more morally than physically because of what had happened against us in both deeds and words by you. Despite all this you will always remain our son whatever happened. ... Our dear son, Excellency, Baraka Hussein Abu Oubama, your intervention in the name of the U.S.A. is a must, so that Nato would withdraw finally from the Libyan affair."
Before the American invasion in March 2003, Iraq tried to negotiate a peace deal with the United States. Iraqi officials, including the chief of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, wanted Washington to know that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction and offered to allow American troops and experts to conduct a search; they also offered full support for any US plan in the Arab-Israeli peace process, and to hand over a man accused of being involved in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. If this is about oil, they added, they would also talk about US oil concessions. ... Then came shock and awe!
-------


The Obama administration continues in the tradition of American Imperialism to intervene in the affairs of foreign nations. The killing of Gaddafi in large part is another warning as is Iraqa nd Afghanistan to nations and their leaders not to act contrary to America's interests which includes allowing US corporations to operate freely and without reguulatory restrictions . The welfare of the people of other nations is of little consequece compared to the profits of US or Western corporations .
National Security is used as an excuse for more wars of aggression and the plundering of those nations.

and we see evidence of America's gun-boat diplomacy every day of the week and still the U.S. makes excuses and the world's nations quiver in fear.

US Kills Over 120 People In 2 Days By Press TV November 3, 2011

-At least 127 people have been killed in separate US assassination drone strikes in Somalia and Pakistan's northwestern tribal region bordering Afghanistan over the past two days.

and here's a good video outlining what good he had done for his people and that from the beginning he was hated by the US because he dared to take over the oil fields for Libyans.
Gaddafi wanted to create the voluntary united Africa.
Gaddafi pissed off Americans by being against the Iraq War.
Nelson Mandella who is also hated by America praised Gaddafi with his help in ending Apatheid in South Africa. This upset racist & pro-Apartheid American  politicians such as John MacCain & Jesse Helms and other like-minded Americans such as Pat Buchanan or a racist intellectual such as Proto-Fascist  William F. Buckley Jr. or the darling of the extreme right Ayn Rand who also believe Whites are superior to blacks or any non-whites or non-Aryans .

The Real Gaddafi -or De-demonizing Gaddafi 
Uploaded by  on Jun 26, 2011



also see for instance:

 Recently read books:

* Anderson, Fred
& Andrew Clayton     The Dominion Of War : Empire and Liberty in North America 1500-2000. Pub. 2005.

* Byers, Michael     War Law : Understanding International Law and Armed Conflict, Pub. 2005.
*** Carr, J. Revell     *Seeds of discontent : the deep roots of the American Revolution, 1650-1750  pub. 2008.


* Paris, Erna      The Sun Climbs Slow : Justice in the Age of Imperial America , Pub. 2008.
* Wright, Robin :      Rock The Casbah : Rage and Rebellion Across The Islamic World, Pub. 2011.
(An illuminating account by journalist Robin Wright of the Arab Uprisings in 2010-2011 referred to as The Arab Spring which was preceded bu similar non-violent uprisings in 2008 or earlier. The author points out that these uprisings are part of the stirrings of a younger Arab generation who want social and economic justice and who hope to bring about reform without Western interference.)


also see:


*Bacevich, Andrew, J. :           The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, Pub. 2009.
* Bacevich, Andrew J. :           Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War, Pub. 2010.
* Bergen, Peter L.  :                 The longest War: The Enduring Conflict Between America and Al-Qaeda Pub. 2011.
* Drury, Shadia B. :                Terror and Civilization: Christianity, Politics, and the Western Psyche, Pub. 2004.
* Faludi, Susan :                     The Terror Dream : Fear and Fantasy in Post 9/11 America, pub. 2007
* Hodgson, Godfrey:              The Myth Of American Exceptionalism, Pub. 2009.
* Huntington, Samuel :               The Clash Of Civilizations: Remaking The World Order, Pub. 1998.
* Immerman, Richard H. :        Empire For Liberty; A History of American Imperialism From Benjamin Franklin To Paul Wolfowitz, Pub. 2010.
* Jacoby, Susan :                    The Age of American Unreason, pub. 2008.
* Kinzer, Stephen &
 Schlesinger, Stephen:           Bitter Fruit : The Untold Story of the American Coup in Guatemala (1954) , Pub.1982
* Kinzer, Stephen :                   All The Shah’s Men ( USA Engineered Coup 1953 ) , Pub. 2004
* Margolis, Eric S.                      American Raj: Liberation or Domination? Resolving The Conflict Between The West And The Muslim World, Pub. 2008.
* Lando, Barry:                              Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, From Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush , pub. 2007

* Rashid, Ahmed :                       Descent Into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia, pub. 2008.
* Rashid, Ahmed :                     Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, Pub. 2001.
* Ricks, Thomas E. :                  Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq,Pub. 2006
* Roberts, Paul William :           A War Against Truth : An Intimate Account of the Invasion of Iraq , Pub. 2004

* Shadid, Anthony :                  Night Draws Near: Iraqis in the Shadow of America’s War , Pub. 2004.
* Wright, Robin :                    Rock The Casbah : Rage and Rebellion Across The Islamic World, Pub. 2011.
(An illuminating account by journalist Robin Wright of the Arab Uprisings in 2010-2011 referred to as The Arab Spring which was preceded bu similar non-violent uprisings in 2008 or earlier. The author points out that these uprisings are part of the stirrings of a younger Arab generation who want social and economic justice and who hope to bring about reform without Western interference.)

* Wright, Ronald:                    What Is America -A Short History Of The New World Order, Pub. 2009.




and so it goes,
GORD.

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