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Fascinating reading about some of the circular nature of events that are playing out in the Middle East as of late. This excerpt from the Counterpunch article titled Once More, Into the Quagmire.
The Middle East Needs Our Military Might
One can hear, in the reverberating noise of mainstream justifications, a series of claims. Among them is the idea that the Middle East is united in opposition to ISIS. Indeed it is, if you confine your poll to the rotten monarchies of the Gulf, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. Adding Jordan to the mix, this fulsome collection of anti-democratic and largely puritanical theocrats is by some stretch of the imagination supposed to provide Arab and Muslim legitimacy to America’s war.
Fancy that, legitimacy conferred by five of the most authoritarian governments in the Middle East. Thus we are ostensibly defending the cause of freedom by assembling a coalition of five treacherous freedom deniers. One human rights violator is leading a coalition of human rights violators against a new human rights violator whose actions deeply offend it. We are appalled at the sight of beheadings and intend to destroy those who practice it, supported by the leading beheader on the Arabian Peninsula. We bomb ISIS oil depots, claiming they have been criminally seized. This barely a decade after we criminally seized major Iraqi oil contracts, while our troops “guarded” the oil ministry (from ‘insurgents’).
Then there’s the dutifully ignored footnote, a poll conducted by the Arab America Institute, which found that:
“Strong majorities in every country favor U.S. policies that support a negotiated solution to the conflict, coupled with more support for Syrian refugees. Majorities in all countries oppose any form of U.S. military engagement (i.e., “no-fly zone,” air strikes, or supplying advanced weapons to the opposition).”
And most Arabs found President Obama most effective in ending the U.S. presence in Iraq. Perhaps the true patriot could efface all of this were it not for the additional fact that our partners in extermination are the leading financial backers of extremists across the Arab world. Saudi Arabia and Qatar are nothing if not open-air markets for arms merchants, money launderers, and angry mullah mosque builders. You could be forgiven for wondering if half our coalition is helping attack ISIS and then immediately re-arming it when it emerges from the rubble, as it invariably will. This is what’s known in arch capitalist circles as “creative destruction.”
I’m frightened for the wrong reasons.
If I listened and believed what I was supposed to believe I would be afraid that the Russians are provoking the West into military conflict in Ukraine. The problem is that I’m more of afraid of what We are doing to destabilize the situation. John Pilger is with me on this one.
“Washington’s role in Ukraine is different only in its implications for the rest of us. For the first time since the Reagan years, the US is threatening to take the world to war. With eastern Europe and the Balkans now military outposts of Nato, the last “buffer state” bordering Russia is being torn apart. We in the west are backing neo-Nazis in a country where Ukrainian Nazis backed Hitler.
Having masterminded the coup in February against the democratically elected government in Kiev, Washington’s planned seizure of Russia’s historic, legitimate warm-water naval base in Crimea failed. The Russians defended themselves, as they have done against every threat and invasion from the west for almost a century.
But Nato’s military encirclement has accelerated, along with US-orchestrated attacks on ethnic Russians in Ukraine. If Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained “pariah” role will justify a Nato-run guerrilla war that is likely to spill into Russia itself.
Instead, Putin has confounded the war party by seeking an accommodation with Washington and the EU, by withdrawing troops from the Ukrainian border and urging ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine to abandon the weekend’s provocative referendum. These Russian-speaking and bilingual people – a third of Ukraine’s population – have long sought a democratic federation that reflects the country’s ethnic diversity and is both autonomous and independent of Moscow. Most are neither “separatists” nor “rebels” but citizens who want to live securely in their homeland.
Like the ruins of Iraq and Afghanistan, Ukraine has been turned into a CIA theme park – run by CIA director John Brennan in Kiev, with “special units” from the CIA and FBI setting up a “security structure” that oversees savage attacks on those who opposed the February coup. Watch the videos, read the eye-witness reports from the massacre in Odessa this month. Bussed fascist thugs burned the trade union headquarters, killing 41 people trapped inside. Watch the police standing by. A doctor described trying to rescue people, “but I was stopped by pro-Ukrainian Nazi radicals. One of them pushed me away rudely, promising that soon me and other Jews of Odessa are going to meet the same fate … I wonder, why the whole world is keeping silent.”
Russian-speaking Ukrainians are fighting for survival. When Putin announced the withdrawal of Russian troops from the border, the Kiev junta’s defence secretary – a founding member of the fascist Svoboda party – boasted that the attacks on “insurgents” would continue. In Orwellian style, propaganda in the west has inverted this to Moscow “trying to orchestrate conflict and provocation”, according to William Hague. His cynicism is matched by Obama’s grotesque congratulations to the coup junta on its “remarkable restraint” following the Odessa massacre. Illegal and fascist-dominated, the junta is described by Obama as “duly elected”. What matters is not truth, Henry Kissinger once said, but “but what is perceived to be true.”
(Source)
I’m certainly glad that Canada is soundly backing the fascist junta in the Ukraine, I’d hate to think what would happen if we let those people decide for themselves what is best for their country. We most definitely need to
serve our interestsprotect the people of Ukraine during this conflict.
I’m frightened for the wrong reasons…
The news: If you’re a 7-year-old in the U.S., you are by law too young to buy a cigarette at the counter — but you are old enough to work in the tobacco fields as a day laborer.
Human Rights Watched released a disturbing report Wednesday on child labor in America’s tobacco farms. The four states that grow 90% of U.S. tobacco — North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia — allow children as young as 7 to work in these farms for minimum wage. And it’s completely legal.
That’s right: Elementary school-age children are harvesting tobacco on America’s farms, exposing themselves to nicotine, toxic pesticides and dangerous machinery.
(Source)
I’ve never been a fan of “the good ole days”. Exploitation of the working class and families was always front and center in my mind as I read about the industrial revolution and our glorious path to the society we have today. Cue this story about elementary children working in the fields to remind ourselves of how advanced and how far we’ve come.
Bleh.
More on the happy fun times religion is bringing to the US over at the Experiential Pagan. :)
Reactionary commentators are famous for making up bullshit ideas designed to scare ignorant people. The American right has the trademark on this particular ploy as they fight to remain the last industrialized country without Universal Health care.
I bet they have contests to see how many poor people they can bamboozle to fight against their own best interests…
This snippet gleaned from the Raw Story comment section illustrates what happens when someone calls conservative/reactionary commentators on their babblative bullshit.
“I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: You want to see a death panel, Mr. Halperin?
I’ll show you a letter on Anthem Blue Cross stationery I got back when Bush was still president and Obamacare was still Newt Gingrich’s plan that never happened.
It says “denial of benefits” on it, but what it is, when the only thing keeping you alive is a very expensive feeding tube, is a letter from a private, employer-provided insurance company’s Death Panel.
My doctor had no input in the decision. The experts providing care had no input in the decision. Just the insurance company’s reviewer, who decided that the continuing care was “not medically necessary”. Which, in context, was a euphemism for “You are too expensive to keep alive. Please die.” And if I hadn’t had enough money in the bank to deal with it myself, I would not be typing this today.
There’s your death panel, you ignorant shill. They exist. Private insurance companies have had them for years. Get sick enough, and if you’re unlucky, you might just hear from one. It isn’t fun. Oh, and you want to know what’s really funny? If I hadn’t been able to afford care by bleeding away my life savings, my other alternative would have been to move to Japan—where they have universal, government-supplied health care.”
So, conseradrones explain to me why you’re not raising holy hell over how private death panels (the insurance companies) are killing Americans.
Fiscal conservatives give me a headache at the best of times. Having them opine about how availability of birth control is going to drive up costs and make every one sad, well…makes me sad. It would be nice, for once, if our conservative friends would base their opinion on something more than a dogmatic adherence to free-market wisdom. The air out here in empirical evidence land isn’t so bad, honest.
The christian majority continues to whinge about being oppressed. Tough beans theocrats – the law, for once, has women’s back on this issue. So when you see the christian whinge starting as illustrated below, you also have the answer to their false claim of being persecuted.
Other than libertarian or misogynistic concerns, both that are as useless as pants on on giraffe, I don’t see what the problem is. Women win, their partners win and society wins.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Whinge: How does forcing employers to give out abortifacients and not giving them a choice mean these people are being Pro-Choice and giving them a choice? Also these people claim to want to keep the government out of people’s bedrooms despite forcing businesses to give out items like birth control pills and IUDs that are used in the bedroom
The Answer: The First Amendment says my employer cannot force me to live according to my employer’s religion if it conflicts with my own. That means my employer cannot use a religious reason to deny me any part of health care under law. “Obamacare” closes the loophole that allowed a pro-life employer to deny me birth control, a privilege no other religious belief has ever been afforded anyway – a Jehovah’s Witness employer never could deny me a blood transfusion and a Christian Scientist employer could never deny me health insurance in the first place. You are claiming a special privilege that no other religious employer has ever had, the “right” to force your religion on another person, and whining that you’re being persecuted when you’re being stopped from violating other people’s First Amendment rights.