Tuesday, February 26, 2008

The producers of the last post have been sacked . . .

Once again Obama gives me (and Phillip Weiss) hope:

Hot Damn! Obama's Secretly a Leftist

Great minds . . .

OK, so I couldn't resist

I was on Obama's campaign website and they have a place where you can submit an "idea". Here is what I submitted. It was off the cuff but I think it turned out OK:

You say you will end the war in Iraq and yet you will leave a sizeable military force either in Iraq or the region to respond to "al-qaeda" bases. Unfortunately the presence of our military in Saudi Arabia was one of the main reasons that al-qaeda attacked us in the first place. By maintaining a military presence in the middle east you will perpetuate military conflict in the region whether you intend to or not.

My idea is a complete withdrawl of American forces from the middle east and around the world. Then we wouldn't need to add 80,000+ new troops as you intend.

Another suggestion is to withdraw military aid around the world particularly from Israel and from dictatorial regimes such as Egypt. This would remove the other main problem that terrorists have with the United States. Perhaps without our unqualified support the hard core elements in Israel might be more inclined to deal equitably with the Palestinians.

Sincerely,

Behind the Next Throne 2

Well, when we last left our hero he was feeling slightly uplifted that the people in the Obama camp were not crazy neocons. Of course our hero forgot who Zbigniew Breszinski really was and the kind of American foreign policy he advocates. To wit, the subtitle of his book "The Grand Chessboard" is

American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives

American primacy? That sounds awfully familiar (pun intended). I submit that if we want to understand where a future President Obama would take us we need to read this book.

Also Democracy Now interviewed Samantha Power, Obama's senior foreign policy advisor yesterday. The interview can be reached from a link here.

Friday, February 22, 2008

The Mark

Something about myself I have started to see recently:

Being so close to death at a young age left its mark. What means anything when it can be ripped away in an instant; school, friends, family . . . it is hard to value anything that is impermanent, but if nothing has any value then what is the purpose at all?

Must there be a purpose? Who said so?

My wife once said that it was like I was empty inside. She didn't say this in the heat of a tussle, it was just a sober observation. At the time it bothered me and now I can see why. In many ways, and for a long time it was very close to the truth. I know it's still there, lurking like some horrible creature, but now I begin to see its face and in the time that I have known her I have begun to know some meaning in this life.

TV news does real journalism!

I wasn't able to catch the entire report on Countdown last night but the parts that I caught were some of the best television journalism I have seen in a long time. Basically, Keith O. and the Countdown crew out the open secret that the Bush Administration consistenly manipulated terrorist threats, in many cases exaggerating them and in some cases making them up out of whole cloth, to trump the news cycle on stories that were unfavorable to them or favorable to their opponents, particularly one John Kerry.

If there is one thing America needs it is more journalism like this:




Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Behind the next throne . . .

If there is one thing that we can learn from the Bush administration it is that often times the people behind the throne are just as important as the one on it. Think Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith and on and on . . .

Well Professor Stephen Zunes has been kind enough to break down the foreign policy people in both the Clinton and Obama campaigns:

Senator Clinton’s foreign policy advisors tend to be veterans of President Bill Clinton’s administration, most notably former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger. Her most influential advisor – and her likely choice for Secretary of State – is Richard Holbrooke. Holbrooke served in a number of key roles in her husband’s administration, including U.S. ambassador to the UN and member of the cabinet, special emissary to the Balkans, assistant secretary of state for European and Canadian affairs, and U.S. ambassador to Germany. He also served as President Jimmy Carter’s assistant secretary of state for East Asia in propping up Marcos in the Philippines, supporting Suharto’s repression in East Timor, and backing the generals behind the Kwangju massacre in South Korea.

Senator Barack Obama’s foreign policy advisers, who on average tend to be younger than those of the former first lady, include mainstream strategic analysts who have worked with previous Democratic administrations, such as former national security advisors Zbigniew Brzezinski and Anthony Lake, former assistant secretary of state Susan Rice, and former navy secretary Richard Danzig. They have also included some of the more enlightened and creative members of the Democratic Party establishment, such as Joseph Cirincione and Lawrence Korb of the Center for American Progress, and former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke. His team also includes the noted human rights scholar and international law advocate Samantha Power – author of a recent New Yorker article on U.S. manipulation of the UN in post-invasion Iraq – and other liberal academics. Some of his advisors, however, have particularly poor records on human rights and international law, such as retired General Merrill McPeak, a backer of Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor, and Dennis Ross, a supporter of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank.


I have predicted in the past (nostrajohnus) that Barack Obama would be the next President. I have been somewhat disappointed in his muted opposition to the war in Iraq while a Senator. That being said I have clung to the shred of hope that Obama is actually a bit more progressive than he lets on, and that he is just coming off hawkish in an attempt to mollify the powerful political and economic interests that might oppose him otherwise. The analysis of his foreign policy team gives me a bit more reason to hope.

You can read the rest of the article over at GlobalResearch.ca

Saturday, February 16, 2008

Systema on the Military Channel Sunday 10/17

Just got an update from Systema headquarters that Systema will be featured in a Military Channel special on Spetsnaz. It should be fun to watch. The feature will be part of their Weaponology program and is scheduled to air tomorrow (2/17) at 10:00 PM Eastern.

Here is a brief video on Systema that features the main North American instructor, Vladimir Vasiliev:


Give a man a fish . ..

Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day.
Teach a man to fish and he'll never go hungry again.
Give a man a fish and make him feel stupid for not knowing how to fish, well, you'll be lucky if you bait another hook.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

A quote . . .

"The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist."

-- Winston Churchill, Nov. 21, 1943

Courtesy of GlobalResearch.ca

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

In the end . ..

This is one of the most important articles I have ever read and represents probably the most honest and balanced view of the times in which we live that I have ever read.

When I was 14 years old I embarked upon a reading program that included The Gulag Archipelago, A People's History of the United States, 1984, Silent Spring, and a volume of much lesser stature entitled The Population Bomb, by Paul Ehrlich. The latter was a Malthusian work predicting mass starvation in the 1980s unless impossibly drastic measures were adopted. Essentially, it predicted the end of the world as we know it. And after reading those other books, some part of me secretly hoped it were true. MORE

Found this courtesy of my friend over at the Whoa!? (or ist it Whoa?!) blog. Anyway, thanks my friend.

John He Is

This one is a classic:



It is, of course, a parody of the amazing Obama video:



I think I might change my name.

Deep Government

A quick glimpse behind the curtain at what is really going on:



Also, the Senate just passed the FISA bill sans the Dodd/Feingold amendment which would have prevented retroactive immunity to the telecom companies.

Wait while I choke back the bile.

The police state has just been authorized.

What happens when the legislative branch legislates against the constitution? All we have left is the judicial branch and I think we know how tenous that is. We are one appeals court ruling away from a fully vetted and approved surveillance state.

McCain voted against the amendment, no surprise there. Clinton abstained, which in my mind is the same as voting against it. Obama voted for it. One policy difference that makes a difference. My vote is for Obama, slender hope that it is.

In the end, however, all is well.

Sunday, February 3, 2008

Cormac McCarthy

Well I had a Cormace McCarthy theme going for a week or so. I saw the film adaptation of "No Country for Old Men" and also read his latest book "The Road".

No Country for Old Men was a fantastic and disturbing movie. Javier Bardem is basically a lock to win the academey award for best supporting actor. I am not going to do a whole huge breakdown here but just a couple of things I took away from it:

The texture of the film is so realistic that it makes the horrible aspects that much more terrifying. I haven't read the book but I have seen a few Coen brothers movies and they seem to genuinely love the background language and culture of their subjects. In this case the culture is southwest texas and the characters walk and talk in an appropriately Texas country manner (or at least close enough for a Kansas boy).

The best thing I can say about this movie is that when it is over I didn't want to get up right away. I just sat there for a while savoring the experience.

* * * * *

The Road is an extremely dark book about a father and son travelling the road to the East coast after a terrible apocalypse. I couldn't put it down, though I do confess to having a weakness for apocalyptic themes.

I feel that in addition to the parent-child themes the book had a lot to say about the notion of community as opposed to the nuclear family.

When the Weather Beats You!

Well I made my regularly scheduled trip across the state this week. I left the night before I would have normally in an attempt to beat the severe winter storm that was bearing down with winds up to 50 MPH.

Well I didn't make it out as early as I would have liked and about half way through the trip I ran smack into the worst snow storm I have ever driven in. I was driving a generally unlit interstate and it was all but invisible. Fortunately I have made this trip a number of times before and had a good feel for the contours of the highway. This might have helped me if I could have consistently seen more than 20 feet down the road. No such luck.

It was snowing so hard with such a heavy wind that there was about 30 minutes (out of 2 hours) that I literally felt like I was driving in a cloud. I could not see anything. I would just coast and wait for it to clear enough to give it some more gas. I probably would not have finished the trip that night if it weren't for the ambulance in front of me. They had high headlight type lamps on the corners in the back of their truck and had them on. This allowed me to see through the frozen fog. They must have had similar lights in the front that allowed them to see further down the road than any of the other cars or trucks were able to.

In fact the ambulance was so comfortable driving in the storm that they almost lost me at times. When they pulled more than a quarter of a mile ahead their lights would begin to dim in the snow. I would speed up slightly to keep up with them. We passed a number of cars in the ditches on either side of the road. These were the unlucky (or stupid ones) the lucky (or smart) ones were often to be found sitting on the shoulder. I can only imagine that they didn't have any confidence driving in zero visibility. I don't blame them. If it weren't for that ambulance I would surely have been one of them.

In the end the ambulance took me almost all the way into town. A lesson that I learned along the way is be careful about following someone blindly. If they drive off the road you are likely to follow them.

When I got checked into the hotel and turned on the TV to decompress I saw a weather update. The weatherman, who exuded a weatherman's storm buzz like a doppler radar signal, announced that we were experiencing "near blizzard" conditions. Obviously he had not been out driving before he recorded THAT report.

The joke around the office (at least in my head) was that I left early to beat the weather, but the weather beat me instead.