When the Tough Should Get Going

punditman says...

A little levity for these panic-ridden times is just what Dr. Punditman has ordered for you today.

You may know Garrison Keelor as the American author, storyteller, humorist, columnist, musician, satirist, radio personality and the host of the Minnesota Public Radio show, "A Prairie Home Companion," who also wrote the screenplay and appeared in the '06 movie of the same name. Or you may not.

Here, he makes a series of witty points about about stubbornness and futility we are seeing on the part of officialdom as the Afghan War continues to drag on...and on.

By Garrison Keillor
www.antiwar.com

The former Marine officer Matthew Hoh, who resigned his Foreign Service post in Afghanistan because he feels the war is pointless and not worth dying for, deserves all the attention he’s gotten and more. The Obama administration faces hard decisions there, and the man made a good case against deeper American involvement. He says that our presence among the Pashtun people, the rural, religious people, is only aggravating a civil war between them and the urban, secular (and, it seems, fraudulent) government of Kabul, and the role of the Taliban and al-Qaeda is not central – the real issues are tribal and cultural.

American families, he said, "must be reassured their dead have sacrificed for a purpose worthy of futures lost, love vanished, and promised dreams unkept. I have lost confidence such assurances can be made any more."

It is rare that a high-level official – he was the senior State Department guy in Zabul province – resigns in protest, and in all the to-do about his four-page resignation letter [.pdf], nobody had a single bad thing to say about Matthew Hoh.

The American people tend not to admire quitters, which is maybe why protest resignations are so rare. You can get up on your high horse and talk about your principles, but we suspect that you’re just another slacker looking for an easy way out. Your old football coach told you that when the going gets tough, the tough get going, and by "get going" he didn’t mean "write a four-page letter about your disillusionment with his coaching and the split-T offense in general" – he meant, Toughen Up, Assume the Three-Point Stance, Hit ‘Em Hard, Eat Some Turf, Get Up and Hit ‘Em Again.

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Vaccines’ Dark Inferno

punditman says...Do you always trust politicians? Do you always trust the police? Do you always trust your school board? Do you always trust the military? Do you always trust corporations? Some of the same people whose answer would be a resounding NO to all of the above, for some reason then put great faith in Big Pharma, in public health, the CDC, the FDA, Health Canada, the WHO., etc. Why? These are just institutions made up of human beings just like the others mentioned above. Punditman does not understand why any rational, educated person would put any more trust in these institutions than in any other ones. Are they bloody God just because they are involved in healthcare? Punditman doesn't even trust that his own doctor knows what he is talking about half the time. Not because Punditman doesn't like his doctor but because after the average five-minute appointment, Punditman knows that his doctor has not always been right. Maybe some people just need to believe in something and the healthcare industry is the last bastion of true faith.

If you wonder why punditman is skeptical about the vaccine industrial complex, read the article below. Punditman is amazed that by raising these issues, he stands accused by some of doing a disservice to the public. So if you've already made up your mind in the other direction, then just go get your damn flu shot, swine flu shot and whatever else is in the works shots. Punditman is getting *sick* of this debate.

What is not on insert labels?

by Richard Gale and Dr Gary Null

The vast majority of scientists, physicians, nurses and public health educators’ trust that the ingredients in a vaccine have been individually and synergistically proven safe and effective. The public believes these vaccines, aside from their specified virus(es), are sterile solutions, free from undesirable contaminants not listed on the manufacturer’s package inserts. When the pediatrician injects a vaccine into the muscle of a child, the public has unquestioning faith that this is the case. In other words, we want to believe that vaccines have been generated under perfect conditions for the safety of children and ourselves.

Our investigation shows that most people do not know what is actually in a vaccine: the active ingredients listed on product labels, inert ingredients, and, most important, the hidden ingredients. Even more remote is taking the time to actually study the subject matter, review the scientific literature and discover the truth for oneself. To our amazement, that truth was easy to find. But it is a truth that will scare the hell out of you.

Similar to eating veal parmesan, what would happen if a video were placed on your table and used as a living reality recipe instead of the actual meal. This video unfolds before your eyes every step in that little creature’s life, from the veal’s birth to the parmesan on your plate. You witness how this veal was starved of its natural nutrients, kept in a tiny stall, grossly malnourished and deformed, filled with drugs—antibiotics—diseased and suffering complete privations until finally slaughtered, sliced, cooked and served on your plate. Would your appetite be the same? Would you still desire the parmesan? Conveniently we rarely ask the questions, where does our food come from? How and where was it grown? What was sprayed on it prior to our consumption? Therefore, we are going to re-record something that even most top health educators and opinion leaders on vaccines are unaware of. That is, what goes into the making of vaccines and what is hidden from you that should give you a moment’s of pause? Then ask yourself, do you want vaccines in your body?

To give us the most in depth, honest, scholarly and objective examination about the methods by which vaccines and their hidden ingredients are prepared we turn to the award-winning British investigative medical journalist, Janine Roberts, who paints an entirely different picture about the darker inferno in vaccines that do not appear on product labels. This is the same Janine Roberts who brought to the world’s attention blood diamonds, genocide in the Congo and the destruction of aboriginal cultures by the Australian government.

Roberts’ account of conversations between high level members from the World Health Organizatioin (WHO), federal health agencies, and expert vaccine scientists, who determine whether or not a certain vaccine will be approved or not, is horrid. Her investigations are based on official meeting documents and her attendance at emergency vaccine meetings, and confirm that our world’s vaccine and health experts agree there is no solution in sight to resolve the potential and uncertain threats posed by these hidden ingredients.(1)

The story begins with the vaccine industrial complex’s attempt to reduce vaccine manufacturing costs by seeking government approval to use cancerous cell lines in the development of vaccines. Vaccine industry’s rationale is that cancerous cells are “immortal.” Current vaccine methodology relies on animal cells, such as fertilized hen embryos and monkey kidneys, that die quickly in culture. Using cancerous cell lines are also much cheaper than relying on the purchase of animals, especially monkeys, that need to be sacrificed for vaccine substrates.

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The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted…

punditman says...When you look for evidence of creeping fascism, sometimes you have to take a closer look at our brave new world. Here's an interesting article that ends up equating P2P file sharing with activists who monitored police scanners at the recent G-20 summit and told other demonstrators about police movements via Twitter—and got themselves arrested. Some might say they should have been arrested. But what if the police were acting illegally? What if the governments of the G-20 were acting like criminals? Who are the real crooks here. What if punditman forgot a question mark or three. Is that a crime.

New technologies, old battles. What will happen to the Pittsburgh Two? From Iran to the US, apparently the Revolution will not be tweeted...

… at least not if “law enforcers” get their way.

During the G-20 summit in the Pittsburgh area last week, police arrested two activists. These particular activists weren’t breaking windows. They weren’t setting cars on fire. They weren’t even parading around brandishing giant puppets and chanting anti-capitalist slogans.

In fact, they were in a hotel room in Kennedy, Pennsylvania, miles away from “unsanctioned” protests in Lawrenceville … listening to the radio and availing themselves of the hotel’s Wi-Fi connection. Now they stand accused of “hindering apprehension, criminal use of a communication facility and possessing instruments of crime.”

The radio they were listening to was (allegedly) a police scanner. They were (allegedly) using their Internet access to broadcast bulletins about police movements in Lawrenceville to activists at the protests, using Twitter.

Is that a crime? Should it be a crime?

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The War on Language

punditman says...A correspondent by the name of Taxiguy has requested the following post, with this comment: "I think this article provides a few minutes of reassurance that the world has not gone completely mad. It also serves as a counterbalance to other articles about the bombast and spew that television news serves up every day."

by Chris Hedges

There is a scene in "Othello" when the Moor is so consumed by jealousy and rage that he loses the eloquence and poetry that make him the most articulate man in Venice. He turns to the audience, shortly before he murders Desdemona, and sputters, "Goats and monkeys!" Othello fell prey to wild self-delusion and unchecked rage, and his words became captive to hollow clichés. The debasement of language, which Shakespeare understood was a prelude to violence, is the curse of modernity. We have stopped communicating, even with ourselves. And the consequences will be as extreme as in the Shakespearean tragedy.

Those who seek to dominate our behavior first seek to dominate our speech. They seek to obscure meaning. They make war on language. And the English- and Arabic-speaking worlds are each beset with a similar assault on language. The graffiti on the mud walls of Gaza that calls for holy war or the crude rants of Islamic militants are expressed in a simplified, impoverished form of Arabic. This is not the classical language of 1,500 years of science, poetry and philosophy. It is an argot of clichés, distorted Quranic verses and slogans. This Arabic is no more comprehensible to the literate in the Arab world than the carnival barking that pollutes our airwaves is comprehensible to our literate classes. The reduction of popular discourse to banalities, exacerbated by the elite's retreat into obscure, specialized jargon, creates internal walls that thwart real communication. This breakdown in language makes reflection and debate impossible. It transforms foreign cultures, which we lack the capacity to investigate, into reversed images of ourselves. If we represent virtue, progress and justice, as our clichés constantly assure us, then the Arabs, or the Iranians, or anyone else we deem hostile, represent evil, backwardness and injustice. An impoverished language solidifies a binary world and renders us children with weapons.

How do you respond to "Islam is the solution" or "Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior"? How do you converse with someone who justifies the war in Iraq-as Christopher Hitchens does-with the tautology that we have to "kill them over there so they do not kill us over here"? Those who speak in these thought-terminating clichés banish rational discussion. Their minds are shut. They sputter and rant like a demented Othello. The paucity of public discourse in our culture, even among those deemed to be public intellectuals, is matched by the paucity of public discourse in the Arab world.

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It's Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran Time

This article is a very good summary of the anti-Iranian manipulation in the western media. The propaganda would be laughable if it wasn't so dangerous. Because there are some very dangerous neo-cons who really do want to bomb Iran.

And of course Obama continues to kowtow. Will the neocons be satisfied with stricter sanctions? They never are. And sanctions not supported by China, who gets oil from Iran, or by India, who exports gas to Iran, will fail. Peacenik wonders how the neo- cons will back down from their hysterical warmongering. Multilateral talks with Iran start today. Peacenik is hoping for some rational outcome.

by Pepe Escobar

The United States and Western "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" crowd -- hysteria running at fever pitch ahead of Thursday's multilateral nuclear talks in Geneva -- could do worse than have a word with Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva.

Lula actually talked to Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad face-to-face for over an hour on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly last week. He invited Ahmadinejad to visit Brazil in November. About the meeting, he went straight to the point, "What I wish for Iran is what I always wanted for Brazil -- a peaceful, civilian nuclear program."

Lula is an island of common sense in an ocean of hysteria. French President Nicolas Sarkozy publicly gave a December deadline for Iran not to make a "tragic mistake", as in provoking Armageddon. Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini reiterated the Group of Eight was giving Iran only three more months.

Read on...

U.S. Story on Iran Nuke Facility Doesn't Add Up

punditman says...It goes without saying that things are not always as they appear to be, especially when it comes to the byzantine world of US-Iranian relations. But for those naive enough to think the Obama administration does not play loose with the truth just like the Bush administration, punditman said it anyway. Try weeding your way through the article below, dear readers. It's dense. Has peacenik found a used bomb shelter yet?

Analysis by Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON, Sep 29 (IPS) - The story line that dominated media coverage of the second Iranian uranium enrichment facility last week was the official assertion that U.S. intelligence had caught Iran trying to conceal a "secret" nuclear facility.

But an analysis of the transcript of that briefing by senior administration officials that was the sole basis for the news stories and other evidence reveals damaging admissions, conflicts with the facts and unanswered questions that undermine its credibility.

Iran's notification to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of the second enrichment facility in a letter on Sep. 21 was buried deep in most of the news stories and explained as a response to being detected by U.S. intelligence. In reporting the story in that way, journalists were relying entirely on the testimony of "senior administration officials" who briefed them at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh Friday.

U.S. intelligence had "learned that the Iranians learned that the secrecy of the facility was compromised", one of the officials said, according to the White House transcript. The Iranians had informed the IAEA, he asserted, because "they came to believe that the value of the facility as a secret facility was no longer valid..."

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Keeping Iran honest

punditman says...
Is Iran close to having nukes? Are they the new Soviets? Is it time for Peacenik to start looking for an old bomb shelter on Kijiji? You may think so if you've been taken in by the media's hype and half-truths regarding the current state of Iran's nuclear energy program and the apparent "discovery" of the Qom nuclear plant. But punditman says not so fast, doomers.

First, get the facts. Former weapons inspector Scott Ritter knows a thing or two about inspections regimes, their legal rigamarole and the politics that can accompany them. He saw the lies coming out of the US and Britain before the Iraq War was launched under false pretenses, and he sees what is happening now with regard to Iran. Says Ritter, "Simply put, Iran is no closer to producing a hypothetical nuclear weapon today than it was prior to Obama's announcement concerning the Qom facility." For instance, how many people reading this post know that Iran declared the Qom nuclear facility to the IAEA several days before Obama's announcement last week?

Punditman says forget the corporate media. They distort, deceive, dumb-down and deflect. Read Scott Ritter instead. Wait, the Guardian is corporate...Well, read on anyway...

Iran's secret nuclear plant will spark a new round of IAEA inspections and lead to a period of even greater transparency

It was very much a moment of high drama. Barack Obama, fresh from his history-making stint hosting the UN security council, took a break from his duties at the G20 economic summit in Pittsburgh to announce the existence of a secret, undeclared nuclear facility in Iran which was inconsistent with a peaceful nuclear programme, underscoring the president's conclusion that "Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow".

Obama, backed by Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy, threatened tough sanctions against Iran if it did not fully comply with its obligations concerning the international monitoring of its nuclear programme, which at the present time is being defined by the US, Britain and France as requiring an immediate suspension of all nuclear-enrichment activity.

The facility in question, said to be located on a secret Iranian military installation outside of the holy city of Qom and capable of housing up to 3,000 centrifuges used to enrich uranium, had been monitored by the intelligence services of the US and other nations for some time. But it wasn't until Monday that the IAEA found out about its existence, based not on any intelligence "scoop" provided by the US, but rather Iran's own voluntary declaration. Iran's actions forced the hand of the US, leading to Obama's hurried press conference Friday morning.

Beware politically motivated hype. While on the surface, Obama's dramatic intervention seemed sound, the devil is always in the details. The "rules" Iran is accused of breaking are not vague, but rather spelled out in clear terms. In accordance with Article 42 of Iran's Safeguards Agreement, and Code 3.1 of the General Part of the Subsidiary Arrangements (also known as the "additional protocol") to that agreement, Iran is obliged to inform the IAEA of any decision to construct a facility which would house operational centrifuges, and to provide preliminary design information about that facility, even if nuclear material had not been introduced. This would initiate a process of complementary access and design verification inspections by the IAEA.

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Can the US-Iran Talks Succeed?

Peacenik was working on a post about Iran this morning which concluded that a military strike against Iran was inevitable. Peacenik allowed the media hype to influence Peacenik. But Peacenik pressed a wrong key on Peacenik's keyboard and the post disappeared. This caused Peacenik to go back and read some more.

This Dreyfuss article seems to be a little more rational than the hysteria Peacenik was reading elsewhere. Nobody thinks a military strike is plausible except the neo cons in the U.S. and Israel. Supposedly the neo cons in the U.S. are in retreat after the Iraq and Ahghanistan fiasco. Or they should be. Do the neo cons have enough influence left to manipulate the U.S. into a shooting war with Iran? Peacenik doesn't think so. Peacenik hopes not. But they are trying hard. It's deja vu. The warmongers methods have worked before. Will they work again?

Posted by Robert Dreyfuss on 09/28/2009 @ 09:00am

The US-Iran talks start Thursday in Geneva and, while a lot of other countries will be there too -- the UK, France, Russia, China, and Germany are all part of the so-called P5 + 1 -- it's really the United States and Iran who will have to make a deal. Even the latest flareup over the secret Iranian enrichment facility doesn't change the basic fact: that Washington and Tehran, after three decades without diplomatic relations, will be talking. It's a startling and important reversal of US policy, as promised by candidate Barack Obama in 2008, abandoning the charged rhetoric of the Bush administration, which lumped Iran incongruously into the Axis of Evil in 2002 and looked aghast at the idea of negotiating with Iran.

Robert Gates, the secretary of defense, did his part yesterday to lower the temperature of the rhetoric by stating explicitly that the US does not have a military option to deal with Iran's nuclear program. He didn't exactly take the military option "off the table," as the unfortunate phrase goes, but he did say:

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Seasonal flu shot may increase H1N1 risk

punditman says...This is freaking hilarious. Run out and get your seasonal flu shot everyone! It's so good for you that it makes it more likely that you will get H1N1! So better run out and get that shot too! Undoubtedly, it's so good for you that it will make it more likely that you will get...bird flu (or some such malady). Watch Big Pharma/Big Gov't try to bury this one. There's too much $ involved.

Preliminary research suggests the seasonal flu shot may put people at greater risk for getting swine flu, CBC News has learned.

"This is some evidence that has been floated. It hasn't been validated yet, it's very preliminary," cautioned Dr. Don Low, microbiologist-in-chief at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.

"This is obviously important data to help guide policy decisions. How can we best protect people against influenza?"

It's important to validate the information to make sure it's not just a fluke, and that the observation is confirmed elsewhere such as in the Southern Hemisphere, which just completed its seasonal flu season, Low added.

Four Canadian studies involved about 2,000 people in Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta, sources told CBC News. Researchers found people who had received the seasonal flu vaccine in the past were more likely to get sick with the H1N1 virus.

Researchers know that, theoretically, when people are exposed to bacteria or a virus, it can stimulate the immune system to create antibodies that facilitate the entry of another strain of the virus. Dengue fever is one example, Low said.

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Chest deep in Afghan quagmire

punditman says...

Punditman is not convinced there is any strategy that will "win" in Afghanistan. But we are being told by the geniuses in charge that to "win" will require much greater sacrifice on the part of Western forces. Many more troops, troops in close contact with the population, troops at greater risk, sustaining much greater casualities. Supposedly the generals and politicians have the hearts and minds thing all figured out this time around.

Meanwhile, the lack of a robust anti-Afghan War movement indicates that most people in the West seem resigned to permanent war and a permanent war economy as long as our side is doing most of the killing and other people are doing most of the dying. It ill be ironic, indeed, if the only thing that brings the Afghan debacle to some kind of half-assed negotiated conclusion is Obama's planned escalation, which finally awakens the "peaceniks" from their Obamatized slumber. Is punditman making any sense? More coffee, please.

Thomas Walkom

The Afghan war was a mistake from the beginning. Its justification was flawed, its intent confused, its implementation half-hearted.

That's why the bleak picture painted by U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the man in charge of NATO forces in Afghanistan should come as no surprise.

In a report made public this week, McChrystal articulated the obvious: Things are getting worse; the war is going nowhere.

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Swine Flu: Behind the Hype

punditman says...

Punditman doesn't have time to go into exquisite detail about his concerns regarding the swine flu vaccine or the origins of the virus, (which he has done many times already in this space), so Punditman will be brief.

There is certainly a lot to be concerned about when it comes to Swine Flu. But not necessarily for the reasons that we are being told. Thankfully, not everyone is buying into all the fear and hype. Many healthcare workers are refusing the shot. According to Michael Hurley, president of the Ontario Council of Hospital Unions, which represents 20,000 hospital workers,"If there is an attempt to make it mandatory, I think you would see civil disobedience." Good on them, and good for Hurley for standing up for the rights of his union members.

Punditman saw Hurley interviewed on the CBC on the weekend and was pleasantly surprised at his candid assessment of what is really wrong with this picture. I am not quoting him, but paraphrasing: namely, hospitals are underfunded, overcrowded and germ-infested and rather than government putting all their energies into a vaccine with dubious efficacy and possibly dangerous effects, (especially for pregnant women workers), they should fix the hospital crisis! That would be the best strategy to contain a pandemic.

Speaking of the vaccine, rather than lining up for a shot of GlaxoSmithKline's squalene-laced vaccine, (linked to Gulf War Syndrome), perhaps folks should redirect their concerns? A good place to start is here or here. Those links oughta scare you a helluva lot more than the virus itself.

Activists Protest War Simulator

Peacenik thinks this is sick. Just another way to brutalize society. War is fun. Violence is fun. Killing is fun. No doubt the Canadian military is viewing the war simulator with envy. How long before one comes to a mall near you.

Society already is too violent. Too well armed. To prone to rage. Society doesn't need war simulators recruiting kids into the army. Stop the war. Stop Don Cherry promoting war on Hockey Night in Canada. Stop glorifying death and destruction. Bring the troops home now.

by Jen DiMascio

Teens "killing" at the Army Experience Center (photo: Counter-Recruitment.org)

PHILADELPHIA - Located across from an indoor skateboarding park in a Northeast Philadelphia outlet mall, the Army Experience Center includes a computer lab that showcases careers as well as the kind of interactive simulators that are irresistible to its target market: the teenage boys recruiters hope will fuel the Army of the future.

One simulator is a model Humvee in which a handful of people can pick up model M-16 rifles and play an interactive video game that simulates a real battle in Iraq or rounding up illegal immigrants who have just crossed the border from Mexico. There's also a model Apache helicopter.

Read on...

Punditman and Bunnie go to U2

A little while ago, Punditman grabbed a book that had been sitting mostly unread on his shelf for 20 years, Unforgettable Fire: The Story of U2. Punditman has been pleasantly surprised at what an enjoyable and informative read it is.

Punditman always really liked U2, so there must be some cosmic reason why, through a stroke of karmic luck, Punditman was given two free tickets to last night's Toronto concert. The actual cost of the seats could provide five tons of food for hungry North Americans, or save the lives of five children from malnutrition in the Third World, or provide medical supplies and treatment to a village of 100 for one year. Punditman wondered what kind of rich nutter would pay the actual cost of these seats; the P-man loves U2 but not that much.

In order to cut down on our carbon footprint, we drove part way and then took the subway. It took 3.5 traffic-jammed, subway-scrunched hours to make what once was an hour-and-change trek to the Big Smoke, reminding Punditman of why he doesn't go into the City as often as he once did and why he would never move back to from whence Punditman once dwelled, albeit in the burbs. Punditman had never lined up at a subway stop for half an hour and he never plans to again. A free Leaf game and the TIFF didn't help with crowd numbers.

Admittedly, for a progressively minded bunch, U2's carbon footprint is a little higher than Punditman and Bunnie and Peacenik and Johnny Anon combined. But hey, bringing music to the people on a revolving stage with a wall of sound while shouting out the message of unity and making people aware of Burmese political prisoner Aung San Suu Kyi, all the while rocking out, is probably hard to do on the cheap—if you want to have a big impact.

The concert was presented under a four-legged, 164 foot-tall canopy that resembled a Klingon Vor'cha-class attack cruiser already filed somewhere in Punditman's subconscious, under Scary Sci-Fi. Well, sorta. But more playful and majestic:



The giant beehive inside of "The Claw" projected all sorts of protechnics and images, duly impressing Bunnie and Punditman.

Punditman was reminded of his age and that the 70's are truly gone forever, when, instead of everyone turning on their lighters near the end, Bono requested that each take out their phone and let their light shine in a spacey future kind of way. Everywhere you looked, where once upon a time in a universe far away, there were bics, there were now blackberrys dotting the night time air. Welcome to the machine, the RIM machine, the tour's corporate sponsor. Punditman thought it was a bit weird, in a geeky corporate governance, future shock kind of way. (Note: on the way to the show, a dude from the 20th century mocked all the concert goers in the subway car who were texting on their cellphones. Said he, "Whatever happened to writing a letter"? Cell phones are fucking gay.") Punditman thought that was a bit weird too, in red neck, Luddite kind of way.

Even with free tix, Punditman still dropped a ton of coin. Let's see: gas, subway, $10.50 per beer, concert t-shirt for Bunnie, cheap knock-off t-shirt from a vender 3 streets away for Punditman, money to the homeless, Apache burgers after the show.

Who the heck can afford tickets? Punditman and Bunnie went to U2 last night.

Here's the setlist:

1. Breathe
2. No Line On The Horizon
3. Get On Your Boots
4. Magnificent
5. Beautiful Day / Alison (snippet)
6. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For
7. Elevation
8. Your Blue Room
9. Unknown Caller
10. Until The End Of The World
11. Stay (Faraway, So Close!)
12. The Unforgettable Fire
13. City Of Blinding Lights
14. Vertigo / Pump It Up (snippet)
15. I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight
16. Sunday Bloody Sunday / Oliver's Army (snippet)
17. MLK
18. Walk On
19. One / Amazing Grace (snippet)
20. Where The Streets Have No Name

encore(s):

21. Ultra Violet (Light My Way)
22. With Or Without You
23. Moment of Surrender

Ronald Reagan's Torture

punditman says...The question that should be asked is: When has the US not been in the torture business? One could easily cite examples throughout American history. Yet there is an almost complete lack of historic memory in this regard.

The Reagan administration's dirty wars in Central America should be relatively fresh in people's minds, with the atrocities committed by the US/CIA-backed Contras and the Salvadorean and Guatemalan military/security forces as part and parcel of a record of brutality. But apparently not. It just didn't happen. Instead, Reagan is portrayed in popular culture as a kind of doddling old grandfatherly type, sort of a Dubya-lite without the evil sneer who valiantly defeated commies and leftists.

In fact, the story was quite different, especially for those struggling for basic human dignity but who happened to be on the receiving end of The Gipper's policies. But instead of facing up to the truth, Obama and the Democrats have signed a resolution to create a commission that will plan a centennial celebration in 2011 of Ronald Reagan’s birth. In other words, none of the facts matter. Can you think of another "open society" so thoroughly hypnotized by a hogwash history? Punditman can't.


By Robert Parry

Lost amid the attention given George W. Bush’s “war on terror” torture policies was the CIA’s cryptic admission that it also engaged in interrogation abuses during Ronald Reagan’s anti-leftist wars in Central America, another era of torture and extra-judicial killings.

The 2004 CIA Inspector General’s report, released last month, referenced as “background” to the Bush-era abuses the spy agency’s “intermittent involvement in the interrogation of individuals whose interests are opposed to those of the United States.” The report noted “a resurgence in interest” in teaching those techniques in the early 1980s “to foster foreign liaison relationships.”

The report said, “because of political sensitivities,” the CIA’s top brass in the 1980s “forbade Agency officers from using the word ‘interrogation” and substituted the phrase “human resources exploitation” [HRE] in training programs for allied intelligence agencies.

The euphemism aside, the reality of these interrogation techniques remained brutal, with the CIA Inspector General conducting a 1984 investigation of alleged “misconduct on the part of two Agency officers who were involved in interrogations and the death of one individual,” the report said (although the details were redacted in the version released last month).

In 1984, the CIA also was hit with a scandal over what became known as an “assassination manual” prepared by agency personnel for the Nicaraguan contras, a rebel group sponsored by the Reagan administration with the goal of ousting Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista government.

Despite those two problems, the questionable training programs apparently continued for another two years. The 2004 IG report states that “in 1986, the Agency ended the HRE training program because of allegations of human rights abuses in Latin America.”

While the report’s references to this earlier era of torture are brief – and the abuses are little-remembered features of Ronald Reagan’s glorified presidency – there have been other glimpses into how Reagan unleashed this earlier “dark side” on the peasants, workers and students of Central America.

Project X

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A 9/11 Reality Check

punditman says...9-11. It is unlikely that this blog, and thousands like it, would even exist if not for that fateful day 8 years ago. Eight years ago, everyone was discussing what the Bush administration was going to do in the wake of the attacks on New York's Twin Towers. Anyone with a driblet of political instinct knew there would be war in Afghanistan. So how is that working out? If someone went to sleep eight years ago and woke up today, they may have trouble believing that the Afghan War is escalating as I write this.

Eight years ago, some of us predicted there would be an assualt on liberty and a crackdown on dissent. And excuses and lies for more war too, in Iraq, or anywhere deemed necessary to go after those "with global reach." 9-11 offered little Hitlers everywhere international carte blanche to forego civil rights in the name of security. It gave us a permanent warfare state that shows no signs of abating. It gave us torture without accountability. 9-11 dumbed us down so that those who never ask the right questions and always avoid the real issues were alloted permanent prime time coverage, while anyone with a lick of common sense went scrambling off to the blogosphere attempting to make sense of planet weird. 9-11 was the perfect gift to the forces of stupidity and reaction. Too perfect, almost.

by Robert Scheer

What if eight years ago the World Trade Center had been leveled by a small nuclear bomb that took out most of lower Manhattan as well? How many millions of innocent civilians would we have killed in retaliation? Would we still be a free society, or would Dick Cheney have attained the power of a demented king, having moved on from snooping on our phone calls and outing honest CIA agents to destroying the last vestiges of the rule of law?

As assaults on a society go, the 9/11 attacks, which left 3,000 dead and are sure to be described in this anniversary week as being among the greatest of historical outrages, were something less than that, given the world’s experience with the ravages of war. The countless Russians and the 6 million Jews killed by those so finely educated Germans come to mind. The 3.4 million Vietnamese, mostly rice farmers, whom Robert McNamara admitted to having helped kill with his carpet-bombing of their country, are a forgotten footnote. Yet we who have never experienced such carnage on our home front all too easily poke out tens of thousands of eyes for each lost one of our own.

Surely two planes crashing into office buildings and another hitting the Pentagon doesn’t compare to the leveling of every major city in Japan with conventional bombing, capped off by the mass murder of hundreds of thousands more at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Speaking of eyes lost, mark the words of Hiroshima’s mayor two years ago: “That fateful summer, 8:15 AM. The roar of a B-29 breaks the morning calm. A parachute opens in the blue sky. Then suddenly, a flash, an enormous blast—silence—hell on Earth. The eyes of young girls watching the parachute were melted.”

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Dampening Debate

punditman says...
As Peacenik muses about Apocalypse 2012, and the end of whatever, Punditman has been pondering more mundane matters, such as the stifling of debate on all the stuff that we still have to deal with before December 21, 2012.

Punditman thinks that on December 22, 2012, there's a good chance we'll still be dealing with stuff like this. It's the kind of thing that drives punditman bonkers. If you think you live in a free society, then read, watch, listen to, or attend a debate. Any debate. Chances are, you will not get the spectrum of opinion that you would hope a truly free society would offer. The panel discussion I refer to is one that took place at the Brookings Institute on August 25 concerning Afghanistan, and it is summarized by author Robert Dreyfuss. The self-described "nonpartisan public policy organization" presented four panelists who were all hawks. None of them questioned the legitimacy of the war. Only how to win it, and how long it would take. That's a friggin' debate?!

A debate is supposed to involve opposing arguments. To quote Michael Palin in Monty Python's Argument Sketch, "An argument is a collective series of statements intended to establish a proposition." Aparently the so-called "liberal" Brookings Institute is not the right room for an argument.

You might find diversity of opinion in some obscure panel discussion in some back water college somewhere or on some internet radio show that has twenty-seven loyal listeners. Or you may find a bunch of people agreeing with themselves there as well.

The point that punditman is trying to make is that when it comes to the big issues of our times, such as war, terrorism, Iran, civil liberties, swine flu or rising beer prices, you are being bamboozled into a type of fascist groupthink by Big Media and Big Experts from Big Institutes.

Sure there are debates-- fake ones that is, where "opposing" viewpoints are presented, but in reality, it's just a bunch of elitists and politicians screaming over top of one another for entertainment value (afterwards, the rivals can be spotted in the pub next to the studio congratulating each other on their performances and caring nothing of rising beer prices).

As Noam Chomsky and others of his ilk have been saying for years, despite the myth of a free and open "marketplace of ideas," the framework for debate within most democracies has always been relatively narrow when it comes to the big issues, compared to the potential. The reasons have to do with profit, advertising revenue, self-censorship and concentratrion of media ownership. Now this may seem counter-intuitive in the internet age, but punditman intuits that despite the abundance of new media, a narrowing of opinion on crucial matters is more evident than ever before.

Observe the following statements:

The war in Afghanistan is a war of necessity and a noble cause.
Terrorists hate us because of our freedom.
Iran is a monolothic Islamofascist state intent on nuking Israel.
Swine flu is a dangerous pandemic that requires everyone to be vaccinated even if we don't have time to safety-test the vaccine.
Beer prices need to rise because...ummm, rising costs or something...

Whether you agree with any or all of these statements or not, ask yourself whether you think the counterpoint to each of these statements gets a fair shake.

Thoughts on Swine Flu: Again!

punditman says...
Punditman has posted extensively about what he thinks of the swine flu threat and the mass distraction/mass vaccination/mass profit that he suspects is underway. Punditman doesn't understand why folks don't take a more skeptical view of this issue. Perhaps it is still early days.

Or perhaps the truth is too ugly to face. Maybe even uglier than lying about war or economic crises. Maybe people can't get their heads around the idea that global and national government health agencies don't always know what they're talking about, that their data is unreliable or manipulated, that the lack of debate and the near complete blackout of critical viewpoints concerning swine flu is actually a natural occurrance; as with other issues it is part of a bureacratic and media groupthink reminiscent of the herd mentaility in the lead up to the war in Iraq. Moreover, perhaps it is too scary to consider that authorities could put at risk the health of millions through possibly unsafe vaccines while shady corporations with horrible track records make massive profits?

It's no wonder people would rather think otherwise. After all, it is much easier to believe that governments and Big Pharma are putting forth a heroic effort to combat a dangerous pandemic, that their vaccine is necessary and safe, that everything they say and do is in the interest of protecting humanity. And that only wingnut conspiracy theorists would question the way this whole thing has unfolded.

Is swine flu an example of a very big lie? Punditman doesn't know for sure. But read this. Then decide for yourself.

Scott Horton Interviews Gareth Porter

punditman says...Punditman is back and he has noticed that Afghanistan is headlining the news a lot lately. The war is going badly; the election a mess. As usual, Scott Horton and Gareth Porter help cut through the fog.

Gareth Porter, independent historian and journalist for Inter Press Service, discusses how Afghan election violence is a portent of things to come, Hamid Karzai’s lead in the “vote for me or I’ll burn down your house” category, Afghan warlords preparing to stuff ballot boxes and how U.S. claims that Iran is supplying arms to Iraq ignore the vibrant Middle East black market.

MP3 here. (27:37)

Gareth Porter is an independent historian and journalist. His articles appear on the Huffington Post, Inter Press Service News Agency and on Antiwar.com.

Both Punditman and Peacenik on Vacation

punditman says...that Punditman is at the cottage. In the meantime, Peacenik is still in the wilderness, at Peacenik's compound. This leaves nobody in charge of the blog. Peacenik should return to posting before Punditman does, possibly by the end of the week. Maybe.

How Harperites are damaging our citizenship

punditman says...

A lot of stupid comments follow this article in the Toronto Star, if you get that far. This woman's freedom was stolen from her for almost three months, and some wingnuts still want to blame the victim. Punditman heard a call-in radio show the other day whereby people recalled their nightmare stories of misfortune when traveling abroad, and the "I don't give a damn" reception they got at Canadian embassies. Scary stuff. We only hear about the high profile ones, but stories abound of traveling Canadians befallen by misfortune abroad (such as being robbed and losing one's passport) and falling into a bureacratic black hole of indifference. Who the hell do these people think they are working for, if not us, the citizenry?

And that's to say nothing of Maher Arar or the horrors of extraodinary rendition. Or several other cases that punditman doesn't have time to list.

Governments are nasty pieces of business in this post 9-11, fear-driven world. Encoraching fascism is real.

This event is yet another example of the kind of brash cruelty we've come to expect from our politicians. Clearly, the Canadian government doesn't give a damn about its citizens anymore—whether they travel to the ends of the earth or to the end of their street. May she sue the Canadian and Kenyan governments and KLM Royal Dutch Airlines big time.

by Haroon Siddiqui

Welcome home, Suaad Hagi Mohamud.

Her case has raised a host of questions. First, who's to blame for her 11-week ordeal? The officials at the Canadian embassy in Nairobi? Or the politicians in Ottawa?

If the former, would some bureaucratic heads roll?

If the latter, as has been the case in several incidents of Canadians stranded abroad, the Stephen Harper government has a lot to answer for: Is it racist? Anti-Muslim? Too ideological? Prone to micromanagement? Or just plain incompetent?

Whatever the reason(s), why have the Tories been so tin-eared to so much public outrage in this regard? Or is there a method to their madness, namely, that they ignore public opinion because they only care about catering to their core constituency of Conservatives?

Finally and more broadly, what responsibility does the federal government, regardless of the party in power, have toward citizens imperilled abroad?

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