Showing posts with label John McCain. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John McCain. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Pravda rips Sarah Palin absolutely to shreds . . .

And let Sarah Palin become POTUS . . .

By Jason Miller

Savage animal slaughterer that she is, it’s apt that Sarah Palin has now brutally plunged a razor-sharp knife into the very heart of the seemingly invincible doubts concerning her capacity to be Vice-President of the United States. Wielding her chutzpah with the awe-inspiring deftness with which she employs her gun or rifle when hunting defenseless wolves or moose, she appeared on 20/20 and left our skepticism writhing on the ground in agony, immersed in its own blood and gasping its last.

Given her virtuoso performance with Charlie Gibson a few nights ago, John McCain might as well croak now and get it over with. She’s ready for the presidency. All the cynics who dared to question her qualifications to become VP now have about as much credibility as card-carrying members of the Flat Earth Society.

Sarah Palin is the person we need (and deserve) to lead us on our incessant quest for global hegemony and in our ongoing orgiastic gang rape of the Earth. A former beauty pageant contestant noted for her fierce competitiveness who would easily qualify as a MILF in the pornography industry and who takes great pride in her capacity to stick her head up her ass and go for it instead of “blinking,” this “lipstick pitbull” embodies nearly all that we worship in a nation fueled principally by narcissism, arrogance, willful ignorance, and belligerence. She may lack the obscene wealth that also triggers our reflexive genuflection, but she will acquire that in time.

Like George Bush, who is demonstrably imbecilic and morally retarded, the “hockey mom” who “worked her way to the top with grit and determination,” also fuels the naïve, jejune notion that “anyone can be President of the United States because we live in a democracy.” Forget the pablum concocted to pacify the masses; the POTUS could actually be ‘anyone who hails from a family with direct ties to the power elite of our bourgeois democracy or who shares their sociopathic tendencies and is willing to sell their souls to do their bidding.’ But who amongst us wants to burden our atrophying minds attempting to understand complexities when the simplistic sweet little lies are so much more palatable and takes so few brain cells to process?

As is befitting of a huntress extraordinaire, Palin provides an endless supply of red meat for the benighted, socially conservative American masses to devour with the ferocity of the hungry wolves she loves to annihilate:

Life begins at conception.

No abortion (including in rape and incest cases) unless it is necessary to save the life of the mother.

Abstinence only.

Our war crimes and genocide in Iraq are God’s will.

Cut government spending on socially beneficial programs but keep underwriting the squatters in Palestine and pumping obscene amounts of cash into our murderous military machine.

Islamic extremists are “hell bent on destroying our nation.”

Russia invaded Georgia “unprovoked” and war with the Russians is a viable option.

Israel would be justified in launching a nuclear strike against Iran to preserve its “security.”

US military incursions into sovereign nations like Pakistan are necessary and permissible.

Shooting any non-human animal that moves, asking questions later, devouring their flesh in a delectable stew, wearing their skins and furs, and mounting their heads on our walls as macabre “trophies” are our God-given rights as red-blooded Americans.

The Alaskan wilderness, over which she presides, is a repository for OUR precious oil and we must “drill, baby, drill,” regardless of how many species we drive to extinction and how much damage we do to the environment.

She is so rife with idiocy, devotion to “normalized violence,” and a river of venom that froths and seethes under her guise of “Christian compassion” that it is virtually impossible to pinpoint her most loathsome and dangerous trait. However, her zealous adherence to Western culture’s paradigm of dominionism, meaning dominion over the environment and nonhuman animals, demonstrates and encapsulates most of Sarah Palin’s myriad sociopathic tendencies that readily qualify her to occupy the Oval Office.

With the advent of agriculture and the subjugation of animals, humanity embarked upon a war against nature (and, incidentally, against ourselves too since we are a part of nature). Gradually becoming more and more obsessed with controlling nearly all aspects of our environment, we grew increasingly exploitative, abusive, and murderous in our zeal to “tame” the world around us. Genesis’s creation myth, which Palin has revealed to be a key component of her worldview, cemented Western culture’s conviction that humans have the absolute and irrevocable right to dominate the Earth and its non-human animal inhabitants. Even the advent of “enlightened” Humanism afforded little relief to Mother Nature, as it underscored dominionism with its anthropocentricism and speciesism. So while Palin’s Creationist beliefs may seem archaic and sophomoric to substantial numbers of US Americans who embrace Humanistic ideas, she still belongs at the forefront of our human-centric charge to devour the planet.

Colonialism, slavery of human and non-human animals, genocide of indigenous people to make way for expansion, ecocide to “clear the land” and extract OUR resources, and now unbridled capitalism and consumerism have been the hallmarks of Western “civilization.” We in the United States are now the nexus of this culture of death that for centuries has blasphemously extended its malignant influence under the banner of Christianity, a repugnant hypocrisy that grossly perverts the teachings of one of the greatest spiritual leaders in history.

We are a nation ruled by the power elite, a relatively small segment of the US population in the upper echelons of the economic, corporate, military, and political hierarchies. Our ruling class is comprised of scoundrels, cold-blooded killers, bullies, thieves, hedonists, and avaricious pigs. The rest of us are ‘wanna-be’ power elites, indoctrinated flag-waving true believers, apathetic by-standers looking out for number one, ‘down-troddens’ just trying to get by, or outraged activists whose actions are effectively neutralized by the overwhelming might of the system.

So who better to serve as the “elected” face of the ruling class than Sarah Palin? After all, she is a faux populist, physically attractive woman (proving that beauty is indeed only skin deep), fundamentalist Christian, Paleolithic conservative, savage huntress, foreign policy nincompoop, and “corruption fighter” (with undeniable connections to pork-barrel king, Internet expert and now indicted Alaska Senator Ted Stevens). Palin is one of “us.” Or at least what many of us have been indoctrinated to admire or aspire to be.

Palin epitomizes the banality of evil that permeates our planet murdering nation. Nursed at the teat of our culture of death and fiercely inculcated with the various components of its dominionism, it would be an existential impossibility for a person of her age to extricate herself from her mental straight-jacket. On a conscious level, she is probably as clueless about her malevolence as she is about US foreign policy and world affairs. And many of us perceive Sarah Palin to be a God-fearing, patriotic, “average Jo” showing those damn “intellectual elites” that we don’t need no stinkin’ knowledge to “git ‘r done,” champion of “family” values and the American Way. Again, Palin is one of “us,” or what many of us wish to become.

Whether we are conscious of it or not, we US Americans are all (to varying degrees), perpetuating the malignant expansion of our culture of death. We are the cancer. The Earth is the patient. And the prognosis is not very reassuring.

Sarah Palin. Death becomes her. And we have become death. Now that’s a match made in Hell. Let’s make her our president….or at least put her one 72 year old heartbeat away…..

Original article posted here.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

The echoing media finally starts doing its job

It's Judgment Day for McCain

By THOMAS FRANK

Last week, Republican presidential candidate John McCain called for a commission to "find out what went wrong" on Wall Street. It was an excellent suggestion: Public inquiries into Wall Street practices served the country well in the 1930s.

And Mr. McCain has a special advantage to bring to any such investigation -- many of the relevant witnesses are friends or colleagues of his. In fact, he can probably get to the bottom of the whole mess just by cross-examining the people riding on his campaign bus. So the candidate should take a deep breath, remind himself that the country comes first, pull the Straight Talk Express over at a rest stop, whistle up his media pals, and begin.

Topic A should be deregulation. Financial institutions are dropping everywhere after playing with poorly regulated financial instruments; the last investment banks standing are begging the government for stricter oversight; and some of our nation's leading champions of laissez faire have ditched that theory in an extraordinary attempt to rescue the collapsing industry.

The philosophy of government that has dominated Washington for almost three decades is now in ruins, and it is up to Mr. McCain to find out exactly why we believed it in the first place. Why did government stand back and permit all the misconduct that generated all this bad debt? What particular ideas led us to believe that government should just keep its hands off and let markets run their course?

Maybe the McCain Commission on Deregulation can kick off with a statement from the candidate himself. It will be helpful for the public, if painful for the senator himself, to hear about Mr. McCain's own close brush with one of the towering figures of financial deregulation, Charles Keating, the master of Lincoln Savings and Loan. Keating had a special, urgent interest in getting Big Brother off our backs: in 1986 some meddlesome agency suspected him of massive violations of S&L regulations. Keating fought back by recruiting a handful of legislators, including Mr. McCain, to pressure S&L regulators to leave his S&L alone. A few years later, Lincoln became one of the largest financial failures in U.S. history.

After that, Mr. McCain can get on to witness No. 1: Phil Gramm, a former adviser to the candidate on economic issues and for many years the heavyweight champion of financial deregulation. It was this very fellow who, as a senator, co-authored the Financial Services Modernization Act, largely trashing the old financial regulatory structure and allowed banks, insurance companies and investment houses to merge into what Mr. Gramm called "a supermarket for financial services" -- supermarkets whose lousy decisions are now the wonder of the world and whose losses we will be underwriting for years to come.

The public will be intrigued to hear that Mr. Gramm, who eventually became an executive at UBS, a bank known for its subprime profligacy, also regarded uncompensated environmental regulation as "nothing less than robbery." They will want to know if he would now apply the same term to the activities of the industry on whose behalf he has labored for so many years.

If Mr. Gramm's wife Wendy happens to be on the bus, Mr. McCain might want to sort out some of the controversies that have followed her own career as a deregulator. For several years Mrs. Gramm headed the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, where her tenure is best remembered by a decision to allow certain kinds of energy trades to go unregulated. A company called Enron turned out to be the greatest beneficiary of the decision -- there isn't space here to recall the statesmanlike things they did with their newfound freedom -- and they appointed Wendy Gramm to their board of directors just weeks after she stepped down from her government job.

Later Mrs. Gramm went to the Mercatus Center in suburban Virginia, a thundering fortress of deregulatory theory. And here we glimpse another promising avenue of any investigation of the laissez-faire faith: the market ideology industry in Washington. Any proper assessment of this industry would also include the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the Heritage Foundation, FreedomWorks, the American Enterprise Institute, and the minor stars in the libertarian firmament, including my favorite, Bureaucrash, where punk rock meets the gold standard.

There are others. Mr. McCain could call Kevin Hassett, one of his senior economic advisers, who declared back in March in the Bangkok Post that the blame for the current crisis could be laid at the feet of "out-of-control government regulation," mainly in the form of municipal smart-growth initiatives. (That's right: The man whispering in the candidate's ear seemed to once believe that not-in-my-backyard suburbanites caused the worst financial collapse since 1929.)

But maybe it would be best simply to agree that financial regulation really is in the country's interest. As Mr. McCain's hero Theodore Roosevelt said 98 years ago, "every man holds his property subject to the general right of the community to regulate its use to whatever degree the public welfare may require it."

Original article posted here.

Sunday, August 31, 2008

The comedy is just starting: serial adulturer McCain playing with his band while looking at Palin's ass

It takes McCain to turn Obama's pretty poor pick phenomenal by comparison

Many Alaskans not so impressed with McCain's pick

Choice stuns state politicians

By SEAN COCKERHAM and WESLEY LOY

John McCain's choice of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate stunned and divided Alaska political leaders on Friday. Supporters said she was a shrewd choice, but others argued Palin has no business being a heartbeat away from the presidency.

"I think it's very easy to underestimate Sarah Palin," said John Binkley, a former state legislator who lost to Palin in the 2006 Republican primary for governor.

Serving as small-town mayor of Wasilla was Palin's main experience before running for governor. Binkley said he underestimated her guts and campaign skill.

"I think there will probably a tendency for the Democrats to do the same thing," Binkley said. "They will assume that her lack of experience on the national stage will put her at a disadvantage, and I'm not certain that will matter."

The reaction wasn't so rosy elsewhere. State Senate President Lyda Green said she thought it was a joke when someone called her at 6 a.m. to give her the news.

"She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president?" said Green, a Republican from Palin's hometown of Wasilla. "Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?"

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Green, who has feuded with Palin repeatedly over the past two years, brought up the big oil tax increase Palin pushed through last year. She also pointed to the award of a $500 million state subsidy to a Canadian firm to pursue a natural gas pipeline that is far from guaranteed.

Democrats helped give Palin her victories on oil taxes and the natural gas pipeline deal, over the opposition of many of Palin's fellow Republicans in the Legislature.

But Anchorage Democratic state Sen. Hollis French said it's a huge mistake by McCain and "reflects very, very badly on his judgment." French said Palin's experience running the state for less than two years hasn't prepared her for this.

Alaska Democratic Party chairwoman Patti Higgins, attending her party's national convention in Denver, said she was shocked to hear the news this morning.

"In this very competitive election for them to go pick somebody who is ... under a cloud of suspicion, who is under investigation for abuse of power. It just sounds like a pretty slow start to me," Higgins said.

The state Legislature is investigating whether Palin and her staff broke state law by pressuring the public safety department to fire a state trooper who was in a custody battle with her sister.

"We need a vice president who can step in if, God forbid, something happened to John McCain," Higgins said. "I don't think she's someone who is ready for that 3 a.m. phone call."

North Pole Republican Sen. Gene Therriault, who leads the minority caucus in the state Senate, said Palin has executive experience as governor and is ready for the job.

"It's a great opportunity for the state of Alaska," Therriault said. "For us to get our message out in what the state has to offer to the nation."

Therriault said Palin has proven to be a quick study who people respect for what she's done as governor, such as helping fix the ethics problems in Alaska politics.

"IT'S ABOUT THE PERSON"

Andrew Halcro, perhaps Palin's biggest political rival in Alaska, had a mixed reaction.

"When I first heard it, I thought, wow, that's great for Alaska. Then I thought, wait, what just happened? Because of course the lack of experience does jump out at you," Halcro said.

Palin is a skilled campaigner able to make people believe in her, said Halcro, who spent nine months on the campaign trail in 2006 running as an independent opposite Palin and former Gov. Tony Knowles, a Democrat, in the general election

"You really have to have a high level of respect for Gov. Palin in the sense that she has this real ability to connect with people. And suddenly people don't think about health care, they don't think about the economy, they don't think about whatever else, education," said Halcro, a self-described wonk. "It's not about the policy. It's about the person."

Palin always saw that, he said.

"It'll be interesting to see if that recipe works on the national stage," Halcro said.

The Republican Party of Alaska said it's 100 percent behind Palin -- despite the high profile battles she's had with state party chairman Randy Ruedrich.

"She brings her voice of new energy and change," party spokesman McHugh Pierre said.

Ruedrich was not giving interviews Friday. Palin's complaints against Ruedrich before she became governor led to the state fining him on ethics charges.

McCain noted approvingly in introducing Palin on Friday that "she's fought oil companies and party bosses."

Palin and Alaska Republican Sen. Ted Stevens were at odds in the recent past as well.

The governor called on Stevens last year to explain why he was being investigated in the federal probe that has since led to his indictment on failure to disclose gifts

But they have appeared closer lately, and Stevens put out a statement praising Palin.

"Gov. Palin has proven herself as a bright, energetic leader for our state and will bring the same energy to the vice presidency. She will serve our country with distinction -- the first Alaskan and first woman on the Republican ticket. I share in the pride of all Alaskans," Stevens said.

"THIS CAN'T BE HAPPENING"

The early morning news of McCain's pick sent jaws dropping throughout Alaska, with friends waking up friends with "Oh my God, have you heard?" phone calls.

State House Speaker John Harris, a Republican from Valdez, was astonished at the news. He didn't want to get into the issue of her qualifications.

"She's old enough," Harris said. "She's a U.S. citizen."

Former House Speaker Gail Phillips, a Republican political leader who has clashed with Palin in the past, was shocked when she heard the news Friday morning with her husband, Walt.

"I said to Walt, 'This can't be happening, because his advance team didn't come to Alaska to check her out," Phillips said.

Phillips has been active in the Ted Stevens re-election steering committee and remains in close touch with Sen. Lisa Murkowski and other party leaders, and she said nobody had heard anything about McCain's people doing research on his prospective running mate.

"We're not a very big state. People I talk to would have heard something."

Few wanted to talk about anything else on talk radio Friday. Conservative host Rick Rydell said there are some benefits to the state, but it's a gamble for McCain to pick an unknown with what he considered "questionable vetting."

"It seems almost like a Hail Mary pass at the end of a football game," Rydell said in an interview after his show Friday.

Rydell said McCain has destroyed his argument about Barack Obama's lack of experience.

But another local talk radio host, Eddie Burke, enthused on the air that he was "overwhelmingly excited" by the selection. "Alaskans will now have a chance to have somebody talking about resources, our undeveloped resources," Burke said.

Burke said McCain's vice presidential pick has already captured the nation's attention. That is what people are talking about, he said -- not Barack Obama's acceptance speech.

PARNELL, COLBERG AFFECTED

Alaska Attorney General Talis Colberg, a Palin appointee, said McCain's announcement left him with "a mixed set of emotions, kind of an odd sense of Alaska nationalism or pride."

"This is like watching a moon landing or something. It's just something you don't expect to see very often. It's wonderful." He continued: "It was an emotional thing to see the governor walk out with her family, and I say, 'Wow, I work for her.' "

Palin likely will be spending much time campaigning outside of Alaska. Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell also is preoccupied with campaigning for Alaska's lone U.S. House seat. The outcome of his GOP primary race with Rep. Don Young is up in the air until absentee and questioned ballots are counted in September. As of Friday, Young was up by 151 votes.

Colberg would become governor if Palin and Parnell both are elected and leave their current positions. Parnell said he found at 6:40 a.m. Friday about McCain's pick, reacting with surprise and letting out a "whoop of happiness."

Original article posted here.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Obama's Georgia position: No change, same ole shit


Change? Regarding Georgia and South Ossetia the gibberish seems frighteningly familiar in positions taken yesterday regarding Georgia.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=ap___F.Vfsnk&refer=home

In an earlier statement regarding Kosovo, Obama had been particularly subtle. While he said that "Kosovo’s independence is a unique situation resulting from the irreparable rupture Slobodan Milosevic’s actions caused; it is in no way a precedent for anyone else in the region or around the world." it also seems to me that everyone can argue that their particular situation is unique.

http://2008central.net/2008/02/17/obama-and-clinton-statements-on-kosovo-independence/

And why would recognizing the right of self determination of people who want to be independent be abhorrent to Western values? Isn't this what concerning Tibet is all about?


The fact is that these positions are driven less by principled positions that by real-politic maneuvers in a geo-strategic fight of positions taken "to preserve US interests." The US has been promoting the breakup of both Bolivia and Venezuela, but, as is usual with the Bush Administration, has failed miserably. (Venezuela: oil rich Zania region http://notapundit.wordpress.com/2006/03/06/venezuela-chavez-says-us-encouraging-oil-region-to-secede/ and http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/3423 ) Bolivia: gas rich Santa Fe province. http://globalalternatives.org/node/86

As a result of Bush's meddling, Bolivian president Evo Morales was forced to issue a recall vote regarding his presidency after refusing to recognize the secessionist attempts. He won the recall vote easily, but it still seems that trouble is brewing, and it is quite likely that US money and advice spurs these efforts.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2008/08/27/2003421484

So when Obummer and McCain talk about the illegality of South Ossetia to be independent, and the unwise behavior of Russia to recognize autonomy, please do not believe a word of it. Rather it all comes down to friends, enemies and natural resources. And in this regard Obummer is singing much the same song as the front and center warmongers, Bush and McCain, filled with much the same hypocrisy and duplicity.

Thursday, August 21, 2008

More Neo Con (warmongering) infestations

McCain's Ties to Neocon Hard Lines

By Jason Leopold
August 21, 2008

Randy Scheunemann, one of John McCain’s top foreign policy advisers, represents a key link in neoconservative strategy that seeks simultaneously to remove hostile regimes in the Middle East and to box in Russia through an expanded NATO that incorporates former Soviet bloc countries.

Scheunemann has come under scrutiny in recent weeks for his past lobbying work on behalf of the government of Georgia, even while he was advising McCain who vowed to bar lobbyists from his campaign.

Scheunemann’s company, Orion Strategies, has received about $750,000 from Georgia, with payments as recently as May.

After the Aug. 7 outbreak of fighting between Georgia and Russia over Georgia’s breakaway province of South Ossetia, McCain – advised by Scheunemann – led a crescendo of tough rhetoric warning of a possible new Cold War and demanding harsh penalties against Moscow.

But Scheunemann's advice on the Russia-Georgia conflict only captures part of his role in shaping McCain ’s neoconservative foreign policy.

Scheunemann merges two key prongs of a neocon global strategy for permanent U.S. military dominance: the simultaneous projection of U.S. power into the Middle East and the elimination of Russia’s dream of reestablishing itself as a major international player.

Operating mostly behind the scenes, Scheunemann has long worked to unify former East Bloc states into an anti-Moscow alliance and to apply regime-change tactics against U.S. adversaries in the Middle East, such as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and the mullahs in neighboring Iran.

In that regard, Scheunemann was one of the neocon operatives who helped promote bogus intelligence about Iraq in the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion. He also has said the U.S. government has not been tough enough in dealing with other “rogue” nations, such as Iran.

For instance, Scheunemann believes one area of U.S. foreign policy that needs change is the ban on assassinating leaders of foreign governments.

“It makes no sense to regularly target command and control nodes with precision-guided munitions, while denying highly capable sniper teams the ability to attack individual targets,” Scheunemann told conservative author Bill Gertz in the 2002 book Breakdown.

According to the book, Scheunemann believed the CIA should have been given the authority to assassinate Saddam Hussein during the first Persian Gulf War.

“The messy business of back-alley tradecraft has taken a back seat to the much simpler business of ‘liaison’ with foreign intelligence services,” Scheunemann told Gertz, adding that he would seek to change that approach if and when he returned to the U.S. government.

A director of the neocon Project for the New American Century, Scheunemann worked on McCain’s failed bid for the White House in 2000 and became a top adviser to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in 2001.

Foreign Contacts

But Scheunemann’s primary service to the Bush administration has come in his private capacity as a contact to Eastern European states as well as his association with Iraqi exiles.

In fall 2002, Scheunemann got a green light from the White House to launch the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, an organization whose mission was to promote regime change in the region and to gather European support for a preemptive strike on Iraq.

“The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq was the brainchild of the Bush administration,” the Financial Times reported on Dec. 16, 2002. “It is said that, once the Saddam regime has been overthrown, the CLI will act as a ‘shadow government’ for Baghdad.

“But it will limit itself to policy matters and will not deal with details. It will, eventually, press for a ‘competitive petroleum production-sharing regime’ which could make OPEC irrelevant to Iraq's oil output or supply decisions.”

Scheunemann had been an early supporter of Ahmad Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress, which supplied false intelligence to the CIA about Hussein’s alleged WMD and his supposed ties to Osama bin Laden.

In 1998, while an adviser to Republican Senators Bob Dole and Trent Lott, Scheunemann drafted the Iraq Liberation Act and got the federal government to funnel $98 million to Iraqi exiles associated with Chalabi’s INC.

Later, the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq housed its offices at the same address as Chalabi’s INC.

Scheunemann worked closely, too, with the White House Iraq Group, which was headed by George W. Bush’s Chief of Staff Andrew Card. The so-called WHIG was charged with selling the war to the American public.

In November 2002, the Washington Post reported that Scheunemann’s group would push for regime change in Iraq through “sessions with opinion makers, contacts for journalists and mass marketing when the time is ripe.

On Jan. 28, 2003, the same day that President Bush delivered his State of the Union address that included the now-debunked claim that Iraq had sought yellowcake uranium from Niger, Scheunemann tapped McCain and his close ally, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, as honorary co-chairmen of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq.

“By joining our efforts, Senators McCain and Lieberman highlight their commitment to ending the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and freeing the Iraqi people," Scheunemann said in a statement issued by his committee.

McCain and Lieberman aggressively promoted the CLI’s goal of Iraqi regime change via a preemptive military strike, which was launched on March 19, 2003, toppling Hussein’s government in three weeks.

In an April 13, 2003, op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, Scheunemann wrote how a “democratic Iraq” would help remake the Middle East, an argument that remains a focal point of McCain’s presidential campaign.

‘New Europe’

But Scheunemann also personifies another part of the neocon agenda. He is a key bridge between an aggressive U.S. policy in the Middle East and the projection of U.S. influence into the former East Bloc nations which were long dominated by the Soviet Union.

In October 2002, during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, President Bush considered naming Scheunemann as a special envoy to the Iraqi opposition. But Scheunemann was judged to have more value enlisting Eastern European nations into the "Coalition of the Willing.”

So, Scheunemann pulled together the “Vilnius 10” group of East European nations – Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Albania, Croatia and Macedonia – in support of Bush’s war policy.

At the time, some foreign policy analysts recognized this collaboration as part of the neoconservative desire to build up NATO to circumvent the United Nations Charter, which bars military attacks without UN sanction.

“With NATO now set to enlarge from 19 members to take on seven East European nations including the three Baltic states, it is said that both the Bush team and the [Committee for the Liberation of Iraq] want the political mechanism of the Atlantic alliance to replace the UN Security Council in giving multilateral legitimacy to any major U.S. action outside North America,” the Financial Times reported on Dec. 16, 2002.

“This is because, unlike the UN Security Council where the French or Russians might block American action, NATO's political decisions do not require consensus. Only NATO's military decisions require consensus.”

For actual military operations, President Bush made clear he would rely on ad hoc alliances, such as the Iraq War’s “Coalition of the Willing.”

The reward for the “willing” Eastern European countries, which the Bush administration called “New Europe,” was future inclusion in NATO with the umbrella of its mutual security guarantee that treats an attack on one as an attack on all.

“Considering the nations - including the Baltic states - signed on the group at the expense of creating a schism in the European Union, the Scheunemann initiative was unanimously regarded as a diplomatic triumph for Washington and a coup d’etat in Brussels,” the Baltic Times reported in August 2003.

Scheunemann’s crossover between his work on the Iraq invasion and his connections to former East Bloc countries proved lucrative, too. He advised them that their collaboration on the Iraq War could get them Iraqi reconstruction contracts as well as U.S. support for their entry into NATO.

He earned hundreds of thousands of dollars from countries, such as Romania which paid him $175,000 for providing advice on Iraqi reconstruction deals.

For another lobbying client, Latvia, Scheunemann made himself even more valuable. He helped form the Latvian Builders Strategic Partnership, a consortium for parlaying Latvia’s support for the Iraq invasion into a cut of the multimillion-dollar reconstruction spending.

Five months after the U.S.-led invasion, Scheunemann met with Peteris Elferts, Latvia’s parliamentary secretary in the Foreign Ministry and ambassador-at-large for Iraqi policy, and Valdis Birkavs, chairman of the Latvian Builders Strategic Partnership, about constructing an information technology system in Baghdad.

Georgia, another of Scheunemann’s lobbying clients, also backed the Iraq invasion, contributed troops, and thus counted on Washington’s support to bring it into NATO. [For more on McCain-Scheunemann-Georgia ties, see Washington Post, Aug. 13, 2008]

Though other NATO members, especially “Old Europe” nations like France, blocked Georgia’s admission, Georgia’s pro-U.S. president Mikheil Saakashvili apparently believed he would have Western backing on Aug. 7 when he launched an offensive against the breakaway province of South Ossetia.

Instead, the Russian military intervened to drive back the Georgian army and then took up security positions inside Georgian territory. McCain joined with leading neoconservative voices in denouncing the Russian attack.

McCain’s tough talk about Russia and his insistence that he will only tolerate “victory” in Iraq offer an important insight into what his foreign policy would look like if he wins the presidency.

Surrounded by hardcore neoconservatives, like Scheunemann, there is every reason to believe that a McCain administration would continue using force to impose Washington’s will in the Middle East while engaging in geopolitical brinkmanship against old rivals like Moscow.

Jason Leopold has launched a new Web site, The Public Record, at www.pubrecord.org.

Original article posted here.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Change? No policy difference. Solution? Do nothing.


Obama, McCain urge restraint in Georgia

(CNN) -- U.S. presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama both spoke to Georgia's president Saturday and continued to call for an end to Russia's bombing of the former Soviet republic.

Sen. John McCain says he has warned against Russian actions that undermine the sovereignty of its neighbors.

Sen. John McCain says he has warned against Russian actions that undermine the sovereignty of its neighbors.

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Both candidates pressed for recognition of Georgia's sovereignty pushed for diplomacy in the conflict.

"For many years, I have warned against Russian actions that undermine the sovereignty of its neighbors," McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, said Saturday. "Unfortunately, we have seen in recent days Russia demonstrate that these concerns were well-founded."

Obama also condemned "the violation of Georgia's sovereignty" and called for "an immediate cease-fire."

"Russia must stop its bombing campaign, cease flights of Russian aircraft in Georgian airspace and withdraw its ground forces from Georgia," Obama said.

Dozens of Russian warplanes bombed civilian and military targets in the former republic of Georgia on Saturday, and a Russian ambassador said that as many as 2,000 people had been killed in the capital of separatist Georgian province South Ossetia.

The Kodori Gorge in upper Abkhazia -- a second breakaway province in Georgia -- was also bombarded by at least 12 Russian jets, Georgian officials said. Video Watch report on the latest violence between Russia and Georgia »

The situation in South Ossetia escalated rapidly from Thursday night, when Georgia said it had launched an operation into the region after its unilateral cease-fire was met with artillery fire from separatists that killed 10 people, including peacekeepers and civilians. It accused Russia of backing the separatists.

McCain said he has spoken to Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili twice since the conflict began. "It is clear the situation is dire. ... I again call on the government of Russia to immediately and unconditionally withdraw its forces from the territory of Georgia."

He called the conflict a "threat to Euro-Atlantic security" and supported attempts by Western powers -- including the United States, the European Union and NATO -- to broker a cease-fire.

Obama, who also talked to Saakashvili, said that direct talks between Russia and Georgia are necessary.

"Diplomats at the highest levels from the United States, the European Union and the United Nations must become directly involved in mediating this military conflict and beginning a process to resolve the political disputes over the territories of South Ossetia and Abkhazia," he said. "A genuinely neutral mediator -- not the Russian government -- must begin a process of negotiations immediately."

Original article posted here.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

John McCain on the 911 Coverup

McCain asked about PNAC and 9/11 at town hall

David Edwards and Muriel Kane

During a town hall event in Portsmouth, OH on Wednesday, John McCain was asked by a member of the audience whether his links to the parent organization of the Project for a New American Century explain why he has been reluctant to support calls for a new investigation of 9/11.

The questioner began, "I was curious about a document. Back in September of 2000, the Project for a New American Century, or PNAC, whose members included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush and Paul Wolfowitz, wrote a document entitled 'Rebuilding Americans Defenses.'"

As McCain turned and paced away from him, the questioner continued, "In it, they state, quote, "The process of transformation, even if it bring revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event like a new Pearl Harbor."

"Now, many Americans believe that that 'new Pearl Harbor' event took place on 9/11," the questioner went on, as McCain grimaced slightly. "And according to a recent New York Times and CBS News poll, 84% of Americans believe that there were some criminal elements of our government involved in 9/11."

Calls of disapproval began to arise from the audience, but the questioner shot back, "Hold on!" and continued asking McCain, "Can you tell us about your role as -- hold on -- as president of the 'New Citizen Project,' founded in 1994, which served as a chief fund-raising and parent organization to PNAC? And is this one of the factors that has made you so reluctant to support the victims' family members and first responders who are begging for a new investigation into 9/11?"

The boos became louder at that point, and McCain grimaced again, turned his back and walked away, but the questioner insisted, "It's a serious question."

"I have a serious answer, sir," McCain replied, "and that is that it was Joe Lieberman and I -- a Democrat -- that sponsored the legislation for the 9/11 Commission. ... And very frankly, the administration was not, shall I say, enthusiastic about the establishment of that commission. ... I am proud of what the 9/11 Commission did. I am proud that we have enacted many of the reforms ... that they recommended. And I will stand by their recommendations and their conclusions, as will the overwhelming majority of Americans."

"It's a free country," McCain concluded. "You are free to disagree with their conclusions. But I am proud to have been one of those who was, along with Joe Lieberman, responsible for the establishment of the 9/11 Commission."

This video is from CNN.com, broadcast July 9, 2008.


Original article posted here.

Monday, June 30, 2008

AIPAC Joe Lieberman calling for more American blood via next false flag operation in 2009

Lieberman: U.S. May Be Attacked In 2009

McCain Supporter Says Terrorists Have Tested New Presidents By Launching Attacks In First Year Of Term




In describing the reasons he believes the Republicans' presumptive nominee for president would be better prepared than the Democrats' to lead the nation next January, Sen. Joe Lieberman said that history shows the United States would likely face a terrorist attack in 2009.

"Our enemies will test the new president early," Lieberman, I-Conn., told Face The Nation host Bob Schieffer. "Remember that the truck bombing of the World Trade Center happened in the first year of the Clinton administration. 9/11 happened in the first year of the Bush administration."

Lieberman nonetheless distanced himself from remarks by McCain chief strategist Charlie Black, who came under criticism for suggesting in an interview that McCain's election chances would be improved if a terrorist attack occurred before November.

"Sometimes even the best of them say things that are not what they intended to say," Lieberman said. "Certainly the implications there I know were not what Charlie intended. And he apologized for it. Senator McCain said he didn't agree. And, of course, I feel the same way.

"But here's the point. We're in a war against Islamist extremists who attacked us on 9/11. They've been trying to attack us in many, many ways since then."

A former Democratic nominee for vice president, Lieberman endorsed McCain for president because, he says, the Democratic Party he joined in the early 1960s is not reflected by the party's current leadership.

He also said that he feels McCain is better prepared to be commander in chief than Barack Obama. "[McCain] knows the world," Lieberman said. "He's been tested. He's ready to protect the security of the American people."

Lieberman also assailed Obama and fellow Senators who called for a timetable of withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq and opposed the "surge" of additional U.S. forces pushed forth by President Bush.

"It's now working," Lieberman told Schieffer. "If we had done what Senator Obama asked us to do for the last couple of years, today Iran and al Qaeda would be in control of Iraq. It would be a terrible defeat for us and our allies in the Middle East and throughout the world. Instead, we've got a country that's defending itself, that's growing economically, where there's been genuine political reconciliation, and where Iran and al Qaeda are on the run. And that's the way it ought to be."

However, McCain's readiness was disputed by retired General Wesley Clark, who is backing Obama for president, despite McCain's storied military experience in Vietnam. "Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president," he said.

(CBS)
"I think Joe has it exactly backwards here," Clark told Schieffer. "I think being president is about having good judgment. It's about the ability to communicate. And what Barack Obama brings is incredible communication skills, proven judgment. You look at his meteoric rise in politics and you see a guy who deals with people well, who understands issues, who brings people together, and who has good judgment in moving forward.

"And I think what we need to do, Bob, is we need to stop talking about the old politics of left and right, and we need to pull together and move the country forward. And I think that's what Barack Obama will do.

“Because in the matters of national security policymaking, it's a matter of understanding risk. It's a matter of gauging your opponents and it's a matter of being held accountable. John McCain's never done any of that in his official positions. I certainly honor his service … But he hasn't held executive responsibility."

Original article posted here.

Wesley Clark crushed McCain

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

Pretty much same ole shit rounding out Obama's advisors. No surprise. But still better than Mc "Bomhb bomb Iran" Cain.

Change We Can Believe In?

Charles Peña

The slogan of Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign is "change we can believe in." It's clear that Obama believes we need to change course with regard to Iraq. In January 2007, he introduced legislation calling for removing combat brigades from Iraq by March 31, 2008, and declared, "It is time for us to fundamentally change our policy. It is time to give Iraqis their country back." And according to his presidential campaign Web site: "Obama will immediately begin to remove our troops from Iraq. He will remove one to two combat brigades each month, and have all of our combat brigades out of Iraq within 16 months."

Like the proverbial joke about a thousand lawyers at the bottom of the sea, Obama's Iraq intentions are a good start. But what about the rest of his foreign policy? A look at his current National Security Working Group provides some insight.

Some are former members of Congress and no big surprises. Sam Nunn was chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and co-author of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) legislation that has resulted in the destruction or deactivation of over 6,000 nuclear warheads and 500 intercontinental ballistic missiles, as well as security upgrades to protect fissile material and nuclear warhead storage sites. David Boren was former chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Lee Hamilton served on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and after leaving Congress he was the vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission and the co-chair of the Iraq Study Group. Tim Roemer also served on the 9/11 Commission.

The group also includes two former Clinton administration secretaries of state: Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright. This is the same Warren Christopher who advocated U.S. intervention in Bosnia using the specious argument that the situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina was a threat to international peace and security. (Another Obama adviser, Jim Steinberg, similarly argued as director of policy planning at the State Department that if the United States did not act "we would face the imminent danger of a widening war that could embroil our allies, undermine NATO's credibility, destabilize nearby democracies, and drive a wedge between the United States and Russia.") Following in the footsteps of her predecessor at Foggy Bottom, Albright argued that the air campaign against Kosovo was "necessary and right" because the fate of Kosovo was somehow "critical to our own security." (Madeleine Albright is also famous for asking then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell, "What's the point of having this superb military you're always talking about if we can't use it?") Yet Clinton's intervention in the Balkans was largely similar to Bush's invasion of Iraq: both demonized rulers as Hitlers, both were unnecessary military actions against sovereign states conducted without the formal approval of the UN Security Council, and neither involved an imminent threat to U.S. security – and both were rationalized on humanitarian grounds.

Another member of the working group is former Clinton national security adviser Tony Lake, who articulated a doctrine of enlargement to "foster and consolidate new democracies" in order to "counter the aggression – and support the liberalization – of states hostile to democracy," which sounds a lot like Bush administration rhetoric. Indeed, Lake argued that "the idea of freedom has universal appeal," which is the same argument President Bush made just prior to the Iraq War: "Democracy will always and everywhere have greater appeal than the slogans of hatred and the tactics of terror."

Other former Clinton administration members include: Greg Craig (director of policy planning in Madeleine Albright's State Department), Richard Danzig (former secretary of the Navy), Eric Holder (deputy attorney general under Janet Reno), William Perry (former secretary of defense), and Susan Rice (former assistant secretary of state for African affairs).

Because Obama has been criticized for not having enough experience, it's not surprising that he would choose to deflect some of that criticism by bringing on experienced advisers – but with so many of them being former Clinton administration appointees, one has to wonder whether they represent recycling more than real change. If the foreign policy change Obama wants us to believe in is only Iraq, that may be the most audacity we can hope for. The question is whether it is enough to believe in.

Original article posted here.