A Nation Armed to the Teeth but Living in Fear

A new study by researchers at the University of Illinois in Urbana, showing that young children who are fearful in childhood are likely to be conservative when they grow up got me to thinking.

It’s not just that a whole generation of kids who get regularly belted by their parents, who are warned that if they behave in a certain manner they’ll go to hell, or that their faces will freeze in some horrible contorted way, or that they will be thrown out of the house, are becoming Republicans. It’s that virtually the whole country is populated by adults who have been raised in a climate of fear by a media and a government that are hell-bent on scaring the shit out of everyone.

The result is that a nation that once, for better or worse, was full of people who could strike out for unknown regions to stake a claim on land when they didn’t even know how to farm (land admittedly belonging to native Americans who could understandably be expected to react with aggressive hostility to being expropriated), who could weather brutal winters with nothing to get them through but a musket and a store of root vegetables in the cellar, who could stand up to the mightiest military of its day and throw off a colonial yoke and boldly create a new country, now cowers in fear at the imagined threats of a landlocked group of uneducated and incredibly poor people living in a country that is a throwback to the 16th century.

America is supposedly the “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave,” as our unsingable national anthem puts it at its most unsingable point, but to tell the truth, it is no longer either of those things. Don’t believe me? Just try telling a cop who stops you for standing off the side of the road with your thumb out and says you are breaking the law against hitchhiking, that he is wrong and that the law does not in fact bar thumbing. For exercising your right of free speech, even if you were polite about it, he will in response threaten you with arrest. Argue (which is your right), and you’re likely to be slammed against his vehicle, cuffed, and dragged off to the slammer. Never mind that the cop is wrong about the law, and that your charges will be tossed out later. If you resist, or mouth off further during this arrest process, you might even be tased. In the end, you are busted, probably bruised, too, and you’ll be detained for a couple of hours until your family can come spring you by paying an extortionate bail.

In an environment like this, you’re not free, and the cop is certainly anything but brave. And that is the situation we’re in today in the U.S.

When the Twin Towers in New York City were attacked and struck by two planes and collapsed, I agree it was a horrible shock, but at no point was the survival of the United States, or even of the American people, threatened. Even if you throw in the attack by a third plane on the Pentagon, which collapsed a section of the world’s biggest building, the US wasn’t facing any existential risk. But the reaction of the American public to this attack on 9-11-2001, encouraged mightily by the US government, was to hunker down, beg for police-state laws, and to stop all normal activity. (In fact, any serious damage to the US following those attacks was caused by the reaction of government, business and the people of the US to the event, not by the events themselves.)

Americans have been put in a state of mindless fearAmericans have been put in a state of mindless fear

Democratic Dysfunction and Warnings of Future Betrayal are Evident in the Obama Campaign

We know that there isn’t much “Hope” for “Change” — at least for progressive change — should President Obama win a second term as president.

Even when he had the chance, with Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress during the first two years of his presidency, and with a solid mandate from the voters to act on restoring civil liberties, taking significant action against climate change, ending the wars and defending Social Security and Medicare, he did nothing.

There are some Democrats still caught up in the fantasy, imagining that if the president is re-elected, and doesn’t have another term to worry about, he will finally show his “real colors” and become the progressive they imagined him to be in 2008.

The evidence that this is not the case, though, is clear in the way he is campaigning. You don’t hear, and did not hear in either of the first two presidential debates, any call for voters to give the president a strong Democratic majority in House and Senate. In fact, there was not a word in either of those debates from the president about the importance of getting rid of the Republican control of the House, and of solidifying the Democratic grip on the Senate to prevent Republicans from again blocking any progressive legislation.

 The Obama/Romney election is much ado about nothingSweating the small stuff: The Obama/Romney election is much ado about nothing

Privatization Madness: Now Private Companies are Collecting Our Taxes

I went into my local township building Monday to settle up my local income tax bill. I had filed for an extension of my federal and state taxes back in April (call it my “Romney extension), because of my father’s unexpected death a few weeks before the tax filing date and the need to deal with his funeral and with arranging for care for my widowed mother, who has alzheimers, had taken up all my time.

I paid my local tax bill on time though, because at 1 percent of income it is a relatively small amount and was easy to get out of the way. I just made a rough estimate and dropped a check with the one-page form in the mail, figuring I’d settle the amount due after my federal taxes were completed. So, after finally getting my federal and state taxes done, I went to the town hall to settle up. It turned out I’d overpaid my local taxes by $165.

Ordinarily if I’ve overpaid my local tax, for example by paying too much in the four required estimated tax payments, the township simply applies the overpayment to my next tax year’s estimated payment. Not so this year. I was told that the collection of taxes by all the townships in Montgomery County had been privatized — taken over by a private accountancy firm called Berkheimer Tax Administrator, a company expressly created to bid for outsourced collection operations of local towns, school districts and counties, for a fee.

The immediate problem for me resulting from this astonishing privatization of a fundamental local government activity — the collection of taxes — was that the local township office said they could not credit my overpayment as before. “Berkheimer is in charge of the money,” a township official told me, “and they will send you a check for the overpayment.”

“But that means I will be late in filing the first two quarterly estimated payments for 2012,” I said, adding, “but I’m really not late, because they already have my money!”

Local governments are privatizing tax collection departments. Next the IRS?Local governments are privatizing tax collection departments. Next the IRS?

Children under Attack in Pakistan and Afghanistan

Six children were attacked in Afghanistan and Pakistan this past week. Three of them, teenaged girls on a school bus in Peshawar, in the tribal region of western Pakistan, were shot and gravely wounded by two Taliban gunmen who were after Malala Yousufzai, a 14-year-old girl who has been bravely demanding the right of girls to an education. After taking a bullet to the head, and facing further death threats, she has been moved to a specialty hospital in Britain. Her two wounded classmates are being treated in Pakistan.

The other three children were not so lucky. They were killed Sunday in an aerial attack by a US aircraft in the the Nawa district of Helmand Province in Afghanistan, not so far from Pakistan. The attack, described by the military as a “precision strike,” was reportedly aimed at several Taliban fighters who were allegedly planting an IED in the road, but the strike also killed three children, Borjan, 12; Sardar Wali, 10; and Khan Bibi, 8, all from one family, who were right nearby collecting dung for fuel.

Initially, as is its standard MO, the US denied that any children had been killed and insisted that the aircraft had targeted three “Taliban” fighters, and had successfully killed them. Only later, as evidence grew indesputable that the three children had also been killed, the US switched to its standard fallback position for atrocities in the Afghanistan War and its other wars: it announced that it was “investigating” the incident and said that it “regretted” any civilian deaths.

There are several questions that arise immediately from this second story. First of all, if the three kids were close enough to be killed by this “precision” attack, they were surely also close enough to have been visible to whatever surveillance craft was monitoring the activities of the Taliban fighters, and if they were seen, there should have been no air strike called in. Second, the US, allegedly trying to reduce civilian casualties, is supposedly now operating its air attacks under rules of engagement that only allow strikes where there is “imminent danger” to US or allied forces. How is planting an IED an “imminent” danger? If the location is known, troops in the area can be alerted, and the IED removed or detonated. An identified IED is not an imminent threat.

The American media have been awash in coverage of the attack on the three Pakistani girls, and on the fate of the courageous girl’s education advocate, young Malala.

Dead children killed by US airstrike and Malala Yusufzai, 14-year-old victim of Taliban fanatics in PakistanDead children killed by US airstrike and Malala Yusufzai, 14-year-old victim of Taliban fanatics in Pakistan

Loyalty's for Chumps on The Street: Bankers’ Man in 2008, Obama's been Dumped by the Money Men

One thing you can say about the financial industry. It has no sense of loyalty.

Back in 2008, most of the biggest contributors to presidential candidate Barack Obama were financial companies. According to the campaign fund tracking website Open Secrets, after the $1.65 million donated by a political action committee (PAC) for the University of California, the next biggest contributor was a PAC for the giant bank, Goldman Sachs, whose employees ponied up a reported $1 million. Right up there among the top contributors to the Obama campaign that year were two other of the nation’s top banks too: JP Morgan Chase, whose employee PAC gave $809,000, and Citigroup, which gave $737,000. Two more big banks, UBS and Morgan Stanley, as well as General Electric, which less than a year later bought a bank to enable itself to benefit from the government’s largesse in doling out billions of “rescue” dollars under the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), were among Obama’s top 20 campaign donors, handing over $533,000, $512,000 and 530,000 respectively to support his election.

Obama, after winning the presidency, repaid all that campaign largesse, appointing bank industry lackeys and executives to top positions. He made Timothy Geithner, who as head of the New York Federal Reserve branch during the Bush administration, had ignored the scandalous derivatives scandals that brought on the financial crash, his Treasury Secretary, and Lawrence Summers, who as Treasury Secretary under President Bill Clinton, had pushed for the deregulation of derivatives, and for allowing banks to merge with investment banks, and who during the Bush years earned millions as a consultant to the hedge fund industry and from speaking fees provided by Wall Street banks, got the post of head of Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors. Meanwhile, GE’s chairman and CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, who famously exported thousands of GE jobs abroad, was given the post of White House Jobs “Czar.”

Given the ease with which the Obama administration allowed the financial industry to subvert the Congressional legislation designed to reform the banking industry in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008-9, and the White House decision not to prosecute a single bank executive for the wholesale destruction of the US and global economy, one might think that Wall Street would have rewarded Obama with more money for his re-election campaign. Instead the industry, seeing even more advantage in having a Republican in the White House, and particularly one of its own — venture capitalist and multi-millionaire Mitt Romney, has switched its support over to his opponent.

Wall Street has dumped Obama this time around, despite his four years of favors to the industryWall Street has dumped Obama this time around, despite his four years of favors to the industry

Shooting to Kill Immigrants on the Mexican Border: WTF? A Border Agent Fired First at Suspected Immigrant Smugglers?

Sometimes it takes a small tragedy to call attention to expose a much bigger one.

The small tragedy happened when Nicholas Ivie, a US Border Patrol agent, was shot dead on a dark night in rough terrain along the border with Mexico in Arizona, a state that has been obsessing about illegal border crossers coming into the US from Mexico seeking jobs.

The story, as reported by FBI and Cochise County Sheriff’s Office investigators, as well as the border patrol union’s president, is that Ivie was with one set of border patrol agents responding to a motion sensor that had been triggered — perhaps by a person or an animal — and ended up getting shot by a second border patrol team that had also been dispatched to investigate, but that had approached the location from another direction.

What reportedly happened is that Ivie opened fire on the other team, and when they returned fire, thinking they were under attack by armed smugglers, Ivie was killed. The incident is being called a case of “friendly fire,” a term that is used by the military for cases where US troops kill one of their own by accident in a firefight.

But the incident is more than just an accident. It highlights the sorry state that the gun-obsessed and war-crazed US has reached when it comes to the issue of immigration.

Unasked is the question: Why would a border agent investigating possible illegal border crossing take the first shot at someone he suspected of trying to sneak into the country?

Many of us in this nation of immigrants are descendants of people who sneaked, lied or cheated in order to get into this country. If Agent Ivie and the US Border Patrol had been around when our forebears tried to get their chance at the so-called “American Dream,” our forebears would have been slain, and we wouldn’t be around today.

US Marines training in Arizona for border patrol duty along the Mexico border. Assault rifles to kill immigrants?US Marines training in Arizona for border patrol duty along the Mexico border. Assault rifles to kill immigrants?

Assange Labeled an 'Enemy' of the US in Secret Pentagon Documents

An investigative arm of the Pentagon has termed Wikileaks founder and editor-in-chief Julian Assange, currently holed up and claiming asylum in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London for fear he will be deported to Sweden and thence to the US, and his organization, both “enemies” of the United States.

The Age newspaper in Melbourne Australia is reporting that documents obtained through the US Freedom of Information Act from the Pentagon disclose that an investigation by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, a counter-intelligence unit, of a military cyber systems analyst based in Britain who had reportedly expressed support for Wikileaks and had attended a demonstration in support of Assange, refers to the analyst as having been “communicating with the enemy, D-104.” The D-104 classification refers to an article of the US Uniform Military Code of Military Justice which prohibits military personnel from “communicating, corresponding or holding intercourse with the enemy.”

This is pretty dangerous language, referring to an Australian citizen who many consider to be no more than a working journalist who has been receiving information leaked by whistleblowers and disseminating that information to the public. As David Cole, a civil liberties attorney in the US associated with the Center for Constitutional Rights, notes, “The US military is not at war with Wikileaks or with Julian Assange.”

Certainly if a member of the US military were to go to a news organization like the New York Times — or the Melbourne Age for that matter — and leak some kind of damaging secret information exposing US military war crimes, it is hard to believe that the military would call that “communicating with the enemy” (though reportedly the Bush/Cheney administration considered, but then dropped the idea of bringing espionage charges against Times reporter James Risen for publishing in his book secret information about the government’s bungled effort to pass faulty A-bomb fuse technology to the Iranians). In any case, a military leaker could easily be charged under the military code with offenses like revealing national security secrets or some other serious charge, which would not involve charging any media organization that received the information.

The decision by the Pentagon to instead use the D-104 code to classify Assange as an “enemy” in this context is dangerous because since 9-11-2001, the US government, with the general consent of the courts, has been treating “enemies” of the state in some very frightening extra-judicial ways. Enemies of the US these days can be summarily arrested and carted away to black-site prisons or to a place like Guantanamo without even a requirement that any notice be given to friends or relatives. They can be locked up indefinitely and denied access to a lawyer. They can even be subjected to what is euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation,” which most people, and which international law, call torture, as was done to Private Bradley Manning, charged with providing hundreds of thousands of pages of secret documents to Wikileaks.

Here's the page from the Pentagon file that labels Assange and Wikileaks as "enemies" of the USHere's the page from the Pentagon file that labels Assange and Wikileaks as "enemies" of the US

Obama 'Lost' the 'Debate' because Campaign Wanted Him to be a 'Moderate'

President Obama was was painful to watch at the debate on Wednesday night.

Time after time, he allowed Mitt Romney to make fraudulent statements or empty statements without slapping the Republican presidential candidate down.

When Romney talked about the allegedly great job he did in Massachusetts on education or on healthcare, Obama needed only to say, “That begs the question, governor, of why you’re polling about 31% in your home state.”

When Romney said he was running because Americans “are hurting,” as he did several times through the event, oozing fake compassion, Obama had only to say, “What are you talking about? You told your contributors that 47% of Americans are ‘victims’ whom you don’t care about and who ‘don’t take responsibility’ for themselves. That’s caring?”

Actually, there were myriad occasions Obama could have chosen to introduce the point about Romney’s admission, on tape, to a group of wealthy donors, about how he felt that 47% of the country were victims who didn’t take responsibility for themselves. Obama never even mentioned that number, though it has been part of his standard stump speech since Mother Jones magazine released the secretly recorded videotape.

Obama was a pushover at the debate, but it was by designObama was a pushover at the debate, but it was by design

Defeating the Rigged 2-Party Debate Lockout of 3rd-Parties: Let’s Have Alternative TV Debates

There is a simple answer to the refusal of the Two Party-Controlled Presidential Debate Commission’s refusal to include third party candidates in its three debates: An alternative televised debate that would include the third party candidates, and that would air right after the corrupt and largely meaningless debate between Obama and Romney ends.

The third-party candidates would have a chance in such a debate to answer the same questions that were put to the two major party candidates, or to say something along the lines of, “This is the stupidest question I have ever heard, and what does it have to do with the problems facing this nation and the world?” With the help of a knowledgeable and serious moderator, they could also deal with some of the questions that the official debate” won’t even be asked, such as, “Why is the US spending as much as the rest of the world combined on its military, and what are you going to do about this?”

Besides the empty Obama-Romney 'debates,' let's have real debates among the 3rd-party candidatesBesides the empty Obama-Romney 'debates,' let's have real debates among the 3rd-party candidates
 

Given how unenthusiastic the American public is with the whole presidential campaign and with the two candidates on offer by the two pro-war, pro-corporate parties, it’s likely that such an alternative debate would be watched by nearly as many people as manage to sit through 90 minutes of staged blather and campaign-vetted and scripted answers from Obama and Romney.

RT-TV would be ideally suited to stage such an alternative debate series. The cable network, owned by Russian Television, but staffed with smart US reporters and hosts and run in the US, claims to reach 50 million American viewers, all of them adults (the network does not run kiddie shows or low-wattage entertainment), It would not be that hard to organize. It would not even really be necessary for the candidates to be be brought together on one stage. They could all participate from local uplink studios or from cameras taping from their own campaign offices.

It won’t do to try such a thing on YouTube. Too many people have trouble loading streaming video, or don’t even have computers or computer savvy. It needs to be done on television, but since most people do have cable, it should be possible to reach a large proportion of households that way. Democracy Now! is going to have two of the third party candidates on its program simultaneously with the official debate, which is great (though they ought to have at least the Libertarian candidate on too), but not that many cable systems carry Democracy Now! Besides, a bunch of alternative presidential candidates sitting around a table with Amy Goodman wouldn’t create the same impression on viewers as having the candidates standing behind lecterns, looking “presidential” in the manner they have come to expect candidates to “debate.”

My suggestion is that everyone who is signing those futile petitions to the major parties and to the Debate Commission calling for them to open up the official debates — a total waste of time — change their focus and start writing to RTTV calling on the network to stage alternative debates starting Oct. 3. Here is the contact addresses (flood them!): RTTV

This has to be organized quickly, though. October 3 is less than three days away.

Israel is not Calling the Shots in this US Election

 
This article appeared initially on the website of PressTV
 

Netanyahu blinked.

That’s the takeaway from the goofy address (complete with Spy vs. Spy-style cartoon bomb held up to the audience) by the right-wing, Cheltenham, PA-raised, MIT-educated Israeli prime minister to the United Nations General Assembly Thursday.

Prior to that address, Netanyahu had been virtually campaigning for Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, hinting repeatedly on US television interviews of a pre-election attack by Israel on Iran’s nuclear fuel-making facilities, criticizing incumbent US President Barack Obama, and demanding that Obama and the US draw a “red line” on how far Iran could go in refining nuclear fuel before it would be considered essential for the US to join Israel in destroying Iran’s military infrastructure.

It was the most blatant attempt by a foreign leader to interfere in a US election in memory, but it was a bust.

American Jews have historically supported the Democratic Party by wide margins, and despite Netanyahu’s threats and bluster, and President Obama’s smack-down — a refusal of Netanyahu’s request for a meeting during his trip to the US –that support has barely budged. In fact, a number of leading Jewish Democrats, including powerful Congressmen Barney Frank (D-Mass.) and Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), publicly told the Israeli leader to back off and stay out of US politics. In endorsing Obama’s refusal to meet with Netanyahu, Rep. Frank said, ”The Israelis have to consider American public opinion. America’s not ready to go to war until it’s absolutely necessary.” He added, “I think it’s a mistake from Israel’s standpoint if they give the impression they’re trying to push us into going to war. I don’t think any pressure’s going to work.”

As I wrote last week, even the Jewish Daily Forward, a respected journal of Jewish news and opinion published in New York City, warned Netanyahu that he had overstepped in pushing the US to go to war, and was risking Israel’s special relationship with the US.

Analysts are now suggesting that Netanyahu has backed off or been called off, even complimenting President Obama and giving him a valentine — an endorsement before election day of sorts–saying in his UN address, “I very much appreciate the president’s position, as does everyone in my country.”

Israeli PM Netanyahu and his cartoonish effort to swing the election in the US have bombedIsraeli PM Netanyahu and his cartoonish effort to swing the election in the US have bombed