When I was a schoolboy, the argument was over whether Franklin Roosevelt knew in advance that Pearl Harbor was to be attacked, but let that attack happen so that he could get the United States into World War II. Then--as quick as quick--we were at war in Korea, over aggression from the North. To make this war legal Harry Truman called it a "Police Action."
We invaded Lebanon in 1958, without invitation, because Admiral Holloway wanted a "show of force" in the Mediterranean, and Dwight Eisenhower let him have his way. After three months we came home. Our accomplishments: ruining Beirut's streets, almost burning down the port (my fault), killing one of our own soldiers, and getting in the way of a democratic election.
Then Lyndon Johnson lied his way into the Vietnam War--undeclared by Congress, but allowed thanks to the fabricated story about attacks on U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin. Lies. A war justified by deliberate lies. A hideous ten-year war followed. But it was actually longer, because the CIA started it in 1962--not in 1964.
Gerald Ford sent U.S. Navy gunboats into North Korea, but failed to start a war. Jimmy Carter asked our European allies to try to resolve our problem at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, and while they were doing so he tried to invade Tehran. Thanks
to U.S. technology, his invasion failed in the desert, and Carter didn't start a war.
Ronald Reagan had a hard time finding a war to fight, and finally settled on invading Grenada. The pretext? Cuban soldiers. But the Cuban "soldiers" had been invited there by the Grenedan government, to build new runways for the airport--so it could land 747's loaded with U.S. tourists! On the second day after the U.S. invasion, the Grenedan president was produced aboard a U.S. Navy ship, holding a typewritten letter (unsigned) requesting (after the fact) U.S. intervention. We admitted this. Awkwardly, we had invaded a member-state of the Commonwealth of Nations, whose head was and is the Queen of England--and she had not been consulted about this invasion of her territory.
George Bush invaded Iraq for oil. Pure, simple, overt aggression. Like Hitler taking Poland. For several months after his decision to invade was made, Bush pretended not to have decided to to go to war. Lies. Documented lies. Several thousand Iraqi soldiers were buried alive by Colin Powell in this exercise in American freedom and justice.
Then Bill Clinton. First thing, in February of 1963, he ordered a bombing raid on the Iraqi city of Basra. Why? Because an Iraqi civilian in puppet Kuwait had been accused of plotting to assassinate George Bush. The Iraqi was never tried, let alone convicted. But that didn't bother Clinton: he was proving that he was an American president, by going to war and killing people.
And then George Bush II. All the stupid lies to get us into war. Nine years' worth now.
And after having said that this war was wrong, and that he would end it; after saying that he would close the U.S. concentration camps around the world, and stop the U.S. torture of abductees--after a year and a half, Obama has done nothing except expand the Bush wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to Pakistan.
Now, it seems we are lying our way toward a war with North Korea. The evidence of a North Korean attack on a South Korean ship is very, very suspicious. It seems to have been manufactured by the South Korean government, perhaps in collusion with the U.S. government.
Lies. Lies. Lies. Lies.
What is this country? Criminal is not a big enough word for us. But it's maybe the biggest we have available. And since the U.S. claims to be a democracy, we are all--every last one of us--criminals. We know full well that we are being told lies. But we don't care. We are a dying society--a non-society, dying of our own stupid greed and arrogance. But we are still trying to rule the world.
zaterdag 24 juli 2010
dinsdag 20 juli 2010
REFUDIATION
REFUDIATION is a perfectly good word. Sarah Palin has no need to indulge in palinody for having used it.
To REFUDIATE is to be asinine, or act like an ass, again.
Sarah Palin’s whole career is REFUDIATION. FUD (or FUDD) is an old Northern word for “ass,” or “backside.” Funny: PALIN is itself an old Greek word for “back,” or “backward.”
And Sarah Palin—going back, perhaps, to her roots, being both a Palin and an ignorant, loud, hee-hawing ass, has been REFUDIATING throughout her public career.
Everybody who laughed at poor, ignorant Sarah should be ASSHAMED for mocking her REFUDIATION.
America needs more ignorance.
It also needs more stupidity and dumbness. Both those words have to do with not saying anything, with keeping your mouth shut.
Bert
To REFUDIATE is to be asinine, or act like an ass, again.
Sarah Palin’s whole career is REFUDIATION. FUD (or FUDD) is an old Northern word for “ass,” or “backside.” Funny: PALIN is itself an old Greek word for “back,” or “backward.”
And Sarah Palin—going back, perhaps, to her roots, being both a Palin and an ignorant, loud, hee-hawing ass, has been REFUDIATING throughout her public career.
Everybody who laughed at poor, ignorant Sarah should be ASSHAMED for mocking her REFUDIATION.
America needs more ignorance.
It also needs more stupidity and dumbness. Both those words have to do with not saying anything, with keeping your mouth shut.
Bert
zaterdag 17 juli 2010
DEALING WITH LIARS
Given that, in the case of Shahram Amiri, we are dealing with the world's premier liars and the world's dumbest bunch of thugs since comic books were born, shouldn't news agencies like the New York Times be a little bit more circumspect?
The world's premier liars and the world's dumbest bunch of thugs are one and the same, of course: the CIA. If I were in charge of guessing through this fiasco, I would have no problem choosing my route.
The first premise is that the CIA made a mess. The second is that they are lying, trying to get out of it. Shahram Amiri either wasn't a nuclear scientist, or he was a plant posted by the Iranian government. He was either kidnapped, or bribed to defect. He was allowed to return to Iran either because he had already set up the disclosure of his "exploitation," should he disappear, or because the CIA was hoping to hide its stupidity, or because they were even stupider than they usually are and just let him go home since he wasn't a nuclear scientist anyway.
The CIA has housed incompetent people since I first met them in 1957. They are Keystone Cops with huge budgets, huge egos, and the intelligence of earthworms.
Earthworms take things in: blind observation. It runs through them, and comes out the other end as intelligence. Ask Philip Agee if I'm right. Or Mark Sullivan. Or the widow--or the children--of Paul Corscadden.
Bert Hornback
The world's premier liars and the world's dumbest bunch of thugs are one and the same, of course: the CIA. If I were in charge of guessing through this fiasco, I would have no problem choosing my route.
The first premise is that the CIA made a mess. The second is that they are lying, trying to get out of it. Shahram Amiri either wasn't a nuclear scientist, or he was a plant posted by the Iranian government. He was either kidnapped, or bribed to defect. He was allowed to return to Iran either because he had already set up the disclosure of his "exploitation," should he disappear, or because the CIA was hoping to hide its stupidity, or because they were even stupider than they usually are and just let him go home since he wasn't a nuclear scientist anyway.
The CIA has housed incompetent people since I first met them in 1957. They are Keystone Cops with huge budgets, huge egos, and the intelligence of earthworms.
Earthworms take things in: blind observation. It runs through them, and comes out the other end as intelligence. Ask Philip Agee if I'm right. Or Mark Sullivan. Or the widow--or the children--of Paul Corscadden.
Bert Hornback
dinsdag 15 juni 2010
PAYING FOR CLEAN ENERGY--AND NEW ORLEANS
It used to be that rich people gave fat sums of money to presidents and politicians to buy the kind of government they wanted. Barack Obama has changed all that. Now he asks little, otherwise insignificant people like me to give him money to buy the kind of government we want. And he obviously has a whole staff of people hired to do this.
For example: This morning I received an e-mail from Mitch Stewart, seemingly the chief confidence man. Today’s subject is “Getting to a Clean Energy Future.” I opened it because of the topic. As a New Orleanian, I am very seriously concerned about our energy future; but more of that later.
Mr. Stewart’s plan this morning was that I add my name to a letter asking the U. S. Senate to vote for Clean Energy legislation. So I did, electronically. But in order to complete this transaction, I was required to choose an amount—between $5.00 and $34,495.00—and submit my credit card information.
I had no intention of paying even $5.00 to try to influence a vote in the Senate. My taxes already pay Senators outrageously and give them health care nobody else in America has and a pension that pays their salaries for life.
But I couldn’t vote unless I paid. I tried giving them a wrong credit card number—but somehow they already had my credit card information, and rejected my wrong number! Hmmmn. What is the president’s chief con man doing with my credit card information?
The Obama “open government” wheeze is just that: another con game. Through Mitch Stewart and others on his team, Mr. Obama gets to talk to me by e-mail any time he wants to. But there is never—never—an opportunity for me to reply.
He tells me he wants me to support his health care plan. I want to say, yes, I will—but first I want him to agree to a much bigger health care plan, by closing his concentration camp at Guantanamo and ending his two brutal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I am not allowed to say that.
He asks me regularly to support something or another, but he never mentions Guantanamo or his wars. And I am supposed to support him? Nonsense.
Mr. Obama is full of words about the BP oil spill catastrophe. Words. George Bush only flew over New Orleans once after Katrina; Obama has flown over four times, and twice he has landed. Of course, those four fly-overs cost us a total of nearly $20,000,000.00 –which could much more usefully been spent on relief for the shrimp fishermen and their families whose livelihood has been wiped out by this disaster. Obama’s fly-overs are a very expensive, insensitive, useless publicity stunt.
Mr. Obama is intelligent. Why didn’t he start building a barricade in front of wetlands and wildlife refuges—and even beaches—on the first day? The country is full of big earth-moving rigs, used by construction companies to build highways, used by Colin Powell’s army to bury thousands of Iraqi soldiers—to bury them alive in the sand. And why haven’t we been siphoning spilled oil out of the Gulf for six weeks now? He should have ordered that on the second day after the disaster struck.
Since Mr. Obama assumed office, he has mocked himself, his promises, and his promise. We expected a great deal of him, because he promised a great deal. All the world saw a promising future in him. And he has betrayed us.
The constant solicitation scheme is offensive. So are the chatty one-way communications he sends out as electronic versions of the infamous “rallies” of earlier times. We can’t talk back. We can’t ask him about the promises he has broken, about his new war hatching in Pakistan.
We can sign our names to letters of support for him. And we can pay him to let us do this. That’s all.
And that’s democracy.
Bert Hornback
For example: This morning I received an e-mail from Mitch Stewart, seemingly the chief confidence man. Today’s subject is “Getting to a Clean Energy Future.” I opened it because of the topic. As a New Orleanian, I am very seriously concerned about our energy future; but more of that later.
Mr. Stewart’s plan this morning was that I add my name to a letter asking the U. S. Senate to vote for Clean Energy legislation. So I did, electronically. But in order to complete this transaction, I was required to choose an amount—between $5.00 and $34,495.00—and submit my credit card information.
I had no intention of paying even $5.00 to try to influence a vote in the Senate. My taxes already pay Senators outrageously and give them health care nobody else in America has and a pension that pays their salaries for life.
But I couldn’t vote unless I paid. I tried giving them a wrong credit card number—but somehow they already had my credit card information, and rejected my wrong number! Hmmmn. What is the president’s chief con man doing with my credit card information?
The Obama “open government” wheeze is just that: another con game. Through Mitch Stewart and others on his team, Mr. Obama gets to talk to me by e-mail any time he wants to. But there is never—never—an opportunity for me to reply.
He tells me he wants me to support his health care plan. I want to say, yes, I will—but first I want him to agree to a much bigger health care plan, by closing his concentration camp at Guantanamo and ending his two brutal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I am not allowed to say that.
He asks me regularly to support something or another, but he never mentions Guantanamo or his wars. And I am supposed to support him? Nonsense.
Mr. Obama is full of words about the BP oil spill catastrophe. Words. George Bush only flew over New Orleans once after Katrina; Obama has flown over four times, and twice he has landed. Of course, those four fly-overs cost us a total of nearly $20,000,000.00 –which could much more usefully been spent on relief for the shrimp fishermen and their families whose livelihood has been wiped out by this disaster. Obama’s fly-overs are a very expensive, insensitive, useless publicity stunt.
Mr. Obama is intelligent. Why didn’t he start building a barricade in front of wetlands and wildlife refuges—and even beaches—on the first day? The country is full of big earth-moving rigs, used by construction companies to build highways, used by Colin Powell’s army to bury thousands of Iraqi soldiers—to bury them alive in the sand. And why haven’t we been siphoning spilled oil out of the Gulf for six weeks now? He should have ordered that on the second day after the disaster struck.
Since Mr. Obama assumed office, he has mocked himself, his promises, and his promise. We expected a great deal of him, because he promised a great deal. All the world saw a promising future in him. And he has betrayed us.
The constant solicitation scheme is offensive. So are the chatty one-way communications he sends out as electronic versions of the infamous “rallies” of earlier times. We can’t talk back. We can’t ask him about the promises he has broken, about his new war hatching in Pakistan.
We can sign our names to letters of support for him. And we can pay him to let us do this. That’s all.
And that’s democracy.
Bert Hornback
woensdag 12 mei 2010
MALIGNING THE KANGAROO
There is no reason for us to insult the kangaroo by talking about the way justice is administered in the United States. It was in the United States some one hundred and fifty or sixty years ago that the "kangaroo court" came into the English language, and it referred to sham legal proceedings. Such travesties of justice were also called "mustang courts." There's no reason to insult horses, either. Let's just call them American courts.
The United States has a rather full history of sham legal proceedings--as do many other countries. But that doesn't make ours the less shameful or despicable. Indeed: since vanity (or is it insecurity?) makes Americans boast constantly about the glories of our form of government, our sham justice is all the more hideous and disgusting. American injustice has become a model of perversion.
The CIA has for many years now operated outside the law, murdering and kidnapping and torturing. Presidents since Eisenhower have all condoned such: have known what the CIA was doing, and have sanctioned it.
Our government acknowledges that since 2001 the CIA has run secret torture camps all over the world. Men are kidnapped and taken to these illegal torture camps. Many of them die there: are murdered there.
In 2004 Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was captured, and held for two years in one of these secret torture camps. Then he was transferred to the US-run concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay. He has been in the Guantanamo torture facility for six years.
Now the US government has decided to bring Mr. Ghailani to trial. It would be worse than naive to expect that his trial will be anything but a sham.
Lewis A. Kaplan, judge of a Federal District Court in Manhattan, was asked by Mr. Ghailani's lawyers to dismiss the charges against him because of his illegal torture--and because he has been held captive for eight years in concentration camps, not charged with any crime.
Judge Kaplan ruled that the US government's illegal treatment of Mr. Ghailani has no relation to the charges brought against him.
I know I shouldn't complain. I should accept this the same way I should accept everything else that's wrong with the United States, from our wars to our racism and our violence and our poverty and our ignorance--and our hypocrisy.
I should be ashamed of myself for complaining, not ashamed of my country.
The United States has a rather full history of sham legal proceedings--as do many other countries. But that doesn't make ours the less shameful or despicable. Indeed: since vanity (or is it insecurity?) makes Americans boast constantly about the glories of our form of government, our sham justice is all the more hideous and disgusting. American injustice has become a model of perversion.
The CIA has for many years now operated outside the law, murdering and kidnapping and torturing. Presidents since Eisenhower have all condoned such: have known what the CIA was doing, and have sanctioned it.
Our government acknowledges that since 2001 the CIA has run secret torture camps all over the world. Men are kidnapped and taken to these illegal torture camps. Many of them die there: are murdered there.
In 2004 Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani was captured, and held for two years in one of these secret torture camps. Then he was transferred to the US-run concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay. He has been in the Guantanamo torture facility for six years.
Now the US government has decided to bring Mr. Ghailani to trial. It would be worse than naive to expect that his trial will be anything but a sham.
Lewis A. Kaplan, judge of a Federal District Court in Manhattan, was asked by Mr. Ghailani's lawyers to dismiss the charges against him because of his illegal torture--and because he has been held captive for eight years in concentration camps, not charged with any crime.
Judge Kaplan ruled that the US government's illegal treatment of Mr. Ghailani has no relation to the charges brought against him.
I know I shouldn't complain. I should accept this the same way I should accept everything else that's wrong with the United States, from our wars to our racism and our violence and our poverty and our ignorance--and our hypocrisy.
I should be ashamed of myself for complaining, not ashamed of my country.
maandag 19 april 2010
US INTERVENES TO STOP GLOBAL WARMING
A hundred million Americans have pledged to use the automatic ice-makers on their refrigerators to make a billion ice cubes to send to the North Pole to restore the ice cap.
For summer vacations, Americans are being urged to drive their cars downhill only, to save gasoline and reduce emissions.
The Surgeon General has urged flatulent Americans to reduce their emissions to once a day.
Republicans have agreed to filibuster only in sign language, and if the Hot Air bill passes, politicians will be silenced indefinitely.
The Office of Air Pollution Control has banned all radio talk shows, and both CNN and Fox News.
Smokers will be forbidden to exhale.
The American Medical Association has recommended that human body temperatures be reduced to 90.0 F. by 2012.
For summer vacations, Americans are being urged to drive their cars downhill only, to save gasoline and reduce emissions.
The Surgeon General has urged flatulent Americans to reduce their emissions to once a day.
Republicans have agreed to filibuster only in sign language, and if the Hot Air bill passes, politicians will be silenced indefinitely.
The Office of Air Pollution Control has banned all radio talk shows, and both CNN and Fox News.
Smokers will be forbidden to exhale.
The American Medical Association has recommended that human body temperatures be reduced to 90.0 F. by 2012.
zaterdag 17 april 2010
Happy Days are Here Again!
"Happy Days are Here Again!" That used to be the U.S. Democratic Party's song. The last time I remember hearing it was in 1968, when at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, a brass band tried to drown out boos from delegates as the Party machinery forced the presidential nomination of Lyndon Johnson's pathetic, spineless tool Hubert Humphrey. That summer an assassin's bullet and the leaders of the Democratic Party gave the world Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, and six more years of the vicious, deadly U.S. war against Vietnam.
These days things are at least as bad as they were in 1968, in the U.S. Two illegal and immoral wars going, and a third now underway (by drone) in Pakistan. A concentration camp at Guantanamo, still, and everybody trying to forget about U.S. war crimes and torture. No right of Habeas Corpus, still--suspended by George Bush's presidental proclamation, and still suspended by Barack Obama. Will it ever be restored? Or does the U.S. find it more convenient to be able to "disappear" people?
But I am told I should be happy, even if my country is a rogue state.
I should be happy, even though New Orleans is still--five years after Katrina--trying to house its homeless. Even though poverty in the United States is unrelieved. Even though our schools are for the most part a disaster. Even though our expensive new health care bill will leave millions of Americans without access to medical care. And the rich are still rich, and getting richer. And the rich are still rich, and getting richer. And the rich are still rich, and getting richer.
Should I say that again? And the rich are still rich, and getting richer.
But never mind them. If the rest of us were decent, we could give the rich away--to Antarctica--and take care of our problems without them. We could, if we had proper, decent leadership. But without having taken care of our poor, our homeless, our ill-educated, our uninsured, even without quitting the wars that bankrupt us both economically and morally, even without closing our concentration camp at Guantanamo, President Obama is talking about wanting to send men to Mars! For that, he should win the Marie Antoinette Prize--or be sent to mad King Ludwig's Neuschwanstein to live out his idiocy.
That's a joke, of course. Not a very good one, not enough of one to get me a place in the chorus of Americans singing "Happy Days are Here Again." But even if I sang "Happy Days are Here Again," I couldn't make myself deaf to the chorus of our wrongs and the sad, shameful state we are in.
These days things are at least as bad as they were in 1968, in the U.S. Two illegal and immoral wars going, and a third now underway (by drone) in Pakistan. A concentration camp at Guantanamo, still, and everybody trying to forget about U.S. war crimes and torture. No right of Habeas Corpus, still--suspended by George Bush's presidental proclamation, and still suspended by Barack Obama. Will it ever be restored? Or does the U.S. find it more convenient to be able to "disappear" people?
But I am told I should be happy, even if my country is a rogue state.
I should be happy, even though New Orleans is still--five years after Katrina--trying to house its homeless. Even though poverty in the United States is unrelieved. Even though our schools are for the most part a disaster. Even though our expensive new health care bill will leave millions of Americans without access to medical care. And the rich are still rich, and getting richer. And the rich are still rich, and getting richer. And the rich are still rich, and getting richer.
Should I say that again? And the rich are still rich, and getting richer.
But never mind them. If the rest of us were decent, we could give the rich away--to Antarctica--and take care of our problems without them. We could, if we had proper, decent leadership. But without having taken care of our poor, our homeless, our ill-educated, our uninsured, even without quitting the wars that bankrupt us both economically and morally, even without closing our concentration camp at Guantanamo, President Obama is talking about wanting to send men to Mars! For that, he should win the Marie Antoinette Prize--or be sent to mad King Ludwig's Neuschwanstein to live out his idiocy.
That's a joke, of course. Not a very good one, not enough of one to get me a place in the chorus of Americans singing "Happy Days are Here Again." But even if I sang "Happy Days are Here Again," I couldn't make myself deaf to the chorus of our wrongs and the sad, shameful state we are in.
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