A Dirty Liberal's Look at the Last Week

Posted by Kris Stewart on 03.30.2011

411's resident Obama cheerleader offers his (her?) opinion on events of the last week...

So many things have occurred since we last spoke, I've been unable to settle on a single topic to discuss. So the following column is a compilation of thoughts on events of the last week. I'm not sure if it will represent a format I'll continue in the future, but I hope you guys enjoy. I'm sure there's plenty on offer for y'all to pick out and disagree with in the comments section, and I look forward to indulging in the kind of mature, if heated, discussions I've become accustomed to with previous contributions.

As you yourself may have become accustomed to with previous contributions, it's a long one (that's how I roll, ladies). But don't feel like you need to swallow it whole. I'm a Michelle Obama/Hugo Chavez kinda guy, so I advocate consuming the following in healthy bites throughout the week while regularly defecating your opinions below the line.

Today we discuss Obama's oil w... military operations, how to lose sense and alienate Muslims, and one man's advice to Wisconsin's Scott Walker to fake an assassination attempt in an attempt to discredit unions. Plus, we celebrate ObamaCare's first birthday!

***

Monday night President Obama gave his first speech to the nation regarding the current military operations in Libya. The speech came just over a week since US and European allies forged the passing of UN resolution 1973 approving the enforcement of no-fly zone measures against Moammar Gaddafi's army, and as plans were being finalized to hand over control to NATO after several days of Western bombardment which had helped propel rebel militants back towards the capital, Tripoli.

Refusing to use the word 'war', Obama delivered a pretty strong argument for why the intervention was necessary, which, even if you - like me - didn't regard it to be the immediate and potential threat he suggested, did a pretty good job of dispelling some of the more politicized criticisms from the right-wing in recent weeks.

He didn't go in immediately, as the likes of Gingrich and McCain suggested, because to do so without the consent of the Arab League - who only reached an agreement a few days before the Security Council resolution - would simply play into the hands of those who would seek to profit by pointing to US involvement in a third Muslim nation in a decade. He didn't seek Congressional consent because the action taken didn't require such a move (John Boehner pretending no efforts had been made to inform him when in fact he'd been briefed prior to the UN resolution was a particularly repugnant example of self-serving politicking). And come Wednesday, the transition of control to NATO officials will ensure the costs incurred will be relatively minor. Certainly relative to those Bush tax cut extensions the fiscal hawks in the Republican party fought so hard for...

But this intervention was about one thing. As Obama asserted on Monday: "When our interests and values are at stake, we have a responsibility to act." American interests were at stake. They were running at $4 a gallon.

This wasn't about a murderous dictator; Yemen's President Saleh, like Egypt's Mubarak and Tunisia's Ben Ali before him, prove that. This wasn't about a potential civil war; Syria and Bahrain prove that. This wasn't about the unsustainable flood of citizens into neighbouring countries escaping from murderous gangs of soldiers sent out to kill by a leader who refuses to cede to international demands; the Ivory Coast prove that (wait, do black Africans count?)

This was about something much cruder: oil.

Not for the French - Nicolas Sarkozy, as I reported in my last column, is polling disastrously as next year's elections loom, with recent surveys showing the conservative president to be less popular than both his potential Socialist and far-right rivals. For him, it was about winning over the French public in a seemingly easy military campaign, receiving the traditional boost in popularity wars tend to produce.

Nor for Turkey or the handful of other nations representing the Muslim contingent of the multilateral campaign, who care more about regional power, security and trade, along with Turkey's desire for approval into the European Union.

But for the two nations who were at the forefront of the invasion of Iraq, and who lead (perhaps not in Sarkozy's self-interested eyes) this latest campaign, it was all about the black stuff.

But unlike Iraq, where oil contracts were sought and duly administered to Western companies, this wasn't about raping a foreign land's resources for the benefit of financiers. (Western oil interests in the region were already being served by Gaddafi who represented one of our closest subservient allies.) This was about securing a foreign land's resources for the benefit of a fragile economic recovery - a recovery at enormous threat should an affronted Moammar Gaddafi succeed in crushing an uprising supported publicly by all Western leaders; who may not prove as agreeable to the demands of a West which had turned its back on him.

***

Ah, the sweet irony of numbers... Just a couple days after passing UN resolution 1973, Barack Obama was in Chile as part of his tour of Latin America, the same country the US had assisted in the overthrow of the democratically-elected socialist president, Salvador Allende, on September 11, 1973, helping usher in the murderous Pinochet dictatorship which ruled for 17 years, along with the Friedmanite doctrine which ravaged the Chilean economy and sent it into a spiral of high unemployment and widening income inequality that it only managed to escape when the West's corporate puppet stepped down and made way for democracy.

Obama was confronted by journalists over the issue, and kudos to the president, he responded admirably, admitting the US had shared a difficult history with Latin America, but adding: "It is important to learn from history but without getting stuck in it, because there are many challenges for the future."

While some of a certain political persuasion will recoil at such concessions to lowly sub-Mexicans - and especially while showing deference to historical fact free of right-wing revisionism - the move to accept at least some responsibility for the economic and political woes enforced on Latin America by covert US actions throughout the last century is commendable. (Even if it persists in Venezuela and Cuba.)

***

Attention-starved pastor, Terry Jones, finally went ahead with the burning of the Koran that caused so much manufactured controversy around September 11 last year. With the world's gaze set towards more uplifting scenes in the Muslim world, few were present on March 20 as the bigot desperately attempted to grasp those last remaining minutes of fame.

And yet certain readers of this column still believe the Jones approach is far more preferable to Obama's in dealing with Islamic fundamentalism...


God created Terry Jones in the image of His asshole.

***

Far more shocking images were released last week depicting US soldiers posing with the dead bodies of innocent Afghans they had callously murdered.

As part of a 'kill team', Army Specialist Jeremy Morlock and four fellow soldiers from his Stryker brigade set up fake combat situations to enable them to murder civilians. Morlock, the first of the group to be court-martialled, was sentenced to 24 years in prison last Thursday after pleading guilty to the murder of three Afghan civilians.

In the latest issue of Rolling Stone, their perverse campaign is described in chilling detail:

"The poppy plants were still low to the ground at that time of year. The two soldiers, Cpl. Jeremy Morlock and Pfc. Andrew Holmes, saw a young farmer who was working by himself among the spiky shoots. Off in the distance, a few other soldiers stood sentry. But the farmer was the only Afghan in sight. With no one around to witness, the timing was right. And just like that, they picked him for execution.

He was a smooth-faced kid, about 15 years old. Not much younger than they were: Morlock was 21, Holmes was 19. His name, they would later learn, was Gul Mudin, a common name in Afghanistan. He was wearing a little cap and a Western-style green jacket. He held nothing in his hand that could be interpreted as a weapon, not even a shovel. The expression on his face was welcoming. "He was not a threat," Morlock later confessed.

Morlock and Holmes called to him in Pashto as he walked toward them, ordering him to stop. The boy did as he was told. He stood still.

The soldiers knelt down behind a mud-brick wall. Then Morlock tossed a grenade toward Mudin, using the wall as cover. As the grenade exploded, he and Holmes opened fire, shooting the boy repeatedly at close range with an M4 carbine and a machine gun."

Unfortunately, the team were not lone renegades, according to the article. Indeed, the team were meant to have operated in public, with many fellow soldiers fully aware of their actions.

The images taken by the soldiers, released by the German magazine Der Spiegel last week, show the men posing to camera celebrating with the corpses of innocent Afghans in their hands like proud hunters do with dead game. One picture features the decapitated head of an Afghan civilian. Another the mutilated limbs of another. Inviting comparisons to the shocking images of Abu Ghraib which caused worldwide controversy in 2004, many are hoping these latest images (Der Spiegel say they have obtained thousands) don't provoke the same retaliatory actions that saw Abu Musab al-Zarqawi behead US contractor Nick Berg shortly after the publication of the Abu Ghraib torture images.

I'm sure the rest of you will join me in hoping (or praying, if that's your deal) that Afghans prove intellectually mature enough to discern between the actions of a few and the American military and people as a whole.

***

On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that an 11-year-old girl from Cleveland, Texas was repeatedly gang-raped over the duration of four months by a close-knit group of neighbours.

According to the article, nineteen men aged 14 to 29 have been charged in connection with the rape of the girl which the paper reports occurred on at least six occasions between September and December of last year.

The article details a particular distressing occasion in November where the girl was forced to strip in front of a several men and was then raped multiple times until the men were forced to stop when the aunt of one of the men returned home. Sneaking the girl out of a window, the men continued their attacks in a trailer outside.

The article fails to mention any Islamic leanings behind the rapings, offering a frightening thought that rape may not be exclusive to bearded Muslims...

***

Last week, Talking Points Memo reported that a prosecutor in Indiana had been forced to resign after the publication of emails he sent to Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker in which he made suggestions that the Republican fake an assassination attempt to be blamed on union members who were protesting his ideological crusade against their rights.

Expressing praise for his brave fight against union members who had offered concession after concession up to the point of having their rights to collective bargaining ripped away from them under the guise of fiscal responsibility, Carlos Lam, a deputy prosecutor in Johnson County, Indiana, encouraged Gov. Walker to initiate a "false flag operation" which would damage the protesters' cause.

"If you could employ an associate who pretends to be sympathetic to the unions' cause to physically attack you (or even use a firearm against you), you could discredit the unions," wrote Lam.

Referring to the growing support for the protests, Lam continued: "Employing a false flag operation would assist in undercutting any support the media may be creating in favour of the unions."

A spokesperson for Gov. Walker insisted nobody at his office had seen the email, and further condemned the remarks it contained, but as TPM points out, Walker had previously made public his feelings regarding possible 'plants' used to harm the unions. When Buffalo Beast blogger Ian Walker made a prank call to Walker in February pretending to be oil magnate David Koch, he enquired whether Walker had considered inserting plants into the crowds. Walker replied that, "we thought about that," but chose against it due to worries of a backlash from the public who'd perhaps urge him to compromise (and therefore fail in his ideological crusade).

In the week that followed Lam's resignation, stories have emerged of Libyan forces planting corpses in areas struck by Western bombing, along with reports that the Syrian government has been attempting to instigate sectarian division between Sunni and Shia demonstrators, as gunmen loyal to President Asaad shot over 50 peaceful protestors dead (attributing the killings to 'armed gangs' intent on 'undermining the Syrian people'). Moammar Gaddafi has repeatedly pointed to al-Queda involvement behind the uprisings in his country, and is believed to have paid mercenaries from neighbouring countries to infiltrate protests and create havoc and suspicion among demonstrators - a tactic previously adopted by deposed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Far more sinister, in recent months rumours have abounded in Egypt that the bombing of a church on New Years' Day, which took 21 lives and was blamed on an obscure al-Queda offshoot, was in fact the work of people inside Mubarak's security apparatus who had hoped the perceived threat of Islamic terrorism would quell the simmering calls for protests in the aftermath of the democratic uprising in Tunisia. Emails obtained following the regime's downfall reportedly show correspondence among security officials referring to the upcoming attacks. Suspicions had already been raised immediately after the bombings when witnesses reported that guards sent to oversee the religious event had evacuated the vicinity right before the bombings occurred.

The tactics adopted by those wishing to trample upon their citizens' rights echo those used in South Africa in the early 90s after the Afrikaner government was forced to make a number of concessions that threatened the apartheid state they'd upheld for decades in the face of global protest (the kind the heavily-lobbied US ensures Israel never encounters). Following the release in 1990 of Nelson Mandela after 27 years of imprisonment, amid growing international pressure to acknowledge the rights of black South Africans, the government funded a covert 'third force' of right-wing paramilitary groups to foment violence between rival black political parties in an attempt to damage the reputation of their opponents. Over 14,000 people are reported to have died during the tension that preceded the democratic election of Mandela in 1994.

As Walker's successful campaign to erode the powers of the last remaining bulwark against the corporate takeover of America proved, it would be naive to suggest the subsequent events in South Africa, along with the likely conclusions of the current uprisings in the arab world, show that those who attempt to discredit their political foes by shady, immoral means eventually get their comeuppance. We're only afforded the exposure of these illicit practices thanks to successful campaigns to rid those guilty parties from office (and Walker's lack of familiarity with a guy who just posts him the money and dictates his wishes from afar). But what of those who don't get caught? Whose infiltration into opposition movements aren't uncovered? Whose attempts to sew the seeds of sectarian, religious or racial division prove successful?

***

Speaking of the brothers Koch, I've often wondered how those on the right can equate the sibling billionaires to the philanthropist and minor media mogul, George Soros.

Glenn Beck has made much noise over the last year 'exposing' the shady practices of the liberal financier, with more than a hint of underlying malicious allusions to his semitic origins, but, despite the conspiracies proving quite successful in elevating the perceived threat of Soros among those on the right, I find it hard to comprehend how the man can be seen as the devilish interloper he's depicted as.

I mean, he's a liberal. A rich liberal. If he's going to be plying a political party with money in order to see himself reap the dividends of their subsidised success, it doesn't make sense him siding with the party of higher taxes. Where's the self-interest in a multi-billionaire funding a party historically aligned to the implementation of progressive taxation, no less one led by a man routinely painted as a socialist menace seeking to steal from the wealthy to enrich the poor?

The self-interest in two multi-billionaire oil magnates funding right-wing, lower tax-advocating politicians who upon taking office seek to deregulate the energy industry, deprive the EPA from acknowledging global warming, and ruthlessly hold the country to ransom until tax extensions for the top two percent of the nation are handed over, that's pretty damn evident.

The contrast between the two sets of political boogeymen couldn't have been made more starker earlier this year -- as the Koch brothers were funding counter-protests against normal Wisconsin citizens who were willing to concede everything but their right as union members to collective bargaining - essentially the unions' existence - George Soros was funding mobile courts in the Democratic Republic of Congo which travelled the country aiming to ensure rapists, so abundant in the nation, were put to trial.

I know which one I think represents the bigger threat to the democratic foundations of America.

Of course, the right needs to portray rivals as evil to counteract accusations towards their own financiers. Hence why unions aren't portrayed as collectives of normal Americans whose individual voices are amplified into one loud representative force, but as greedy leeches with lavish lifestyles far more opulent than yours, dear private sector patriot shouting in space. And why the false equivalency made between George Soros and the Koch brothers continues...


***

And finally...

Last week, President Obama's socialist plot to spread the health celebrated its first birthday. Few turned up to the party, however, with cowardly Democrats refusing to associate themselves with the social outcast that increased coverage for over 30 million Americans (do black Americans count?) and enforced provisions preventing profit-driven insurance companies from pre-condition screenings and the dropping of policies whenever individuals had the audacity to threaten corporate profits with their greedy "illnesses".

One man who did have the balls to care more about the people he was elected to serve over his own career or the lobbyist industry was Democratic Congressman, Anthony Weiner. Embarking on a publicity blitz to mark ObamaCare's anniversary, the New York representative tore apart corporate America and its congressional and media puppets in a series of impassioned speeches.

So to celebrate ObamaCare turning one, as I bid you farewell, here's a little Weiner for your earhole...