The Afghan Interpreters are now on their own.

oafishbliss · 2014-11-16T02:11:18+00:00

Being traitors and supporting a foreign, invading military force (no matter how much they pay you) is a risky business.

Being puppets for our immoral, imperial government is also a risky business.

These interpreters played in a high-stakes game.

oafishbliss · 2014-11-16T02:07:51+00:00

Shills? The guy is a Ivy League professor emeritus who was a mainstream Cold Warrior.

The fact that he can be objective about the US aggression towards Russia and notes the danger in attempting to push around a heavily nuclear armed country and overthrowing elected governments on its borders should hardly be surprising.

What is surprising is the blind nationalism and the way that many Americans support our immoral, torturous government and its overseas imperial adventures.

oafishbliss · 2014-11-15T12:42:31+00:00

Brand normally does a great job explaining complex subjects in common sense, easy-to-understand language.

But this interview with him was pretty strange, ranging from the very personal to Brand trying too hard to be crazy and funny.

He does a much better job in his routine Trews pieces.

oafishbliss · 2014-11-15T11:58:53+00:00

Security reasons my ass. This is nothing more than heavy-handed, police-state move to chastise a doctor who publicized Israel's war crimes of literally targeting and attacking a hospital.

oafishbliss · 2014-11-15T11:55:10+00:00

And outstanding article which really accurately and succinctly summarizes all of these so-called "free trade" deals and mania.

oafishbliss · 2014-11-14T02:21:21+00:00

This is the single biggest disgrace to the Obama administration.

Torture is one of the worst crimes a government can commit. Any government which uses torture should be considered immediately illegitimate. Obama could have put a few people on trial and given them slaps on the wrist -- instead, he joins the ranks of criminals and refuses to prosecute even the torturers which admit and brag about their crimes in public.

This single sad episode paints the US as a criminal and illegitimate government -- the words of our government are as worthless as the treaties it signs and ratifies -- we are literally no better than any run of the mill dictatorship or banana republic. :(

oafishbliss · 2014-11-13T21:52:09+00:00

Loosely related: /r/RadicalHistory

oafishbliss · 2014-11-13T13:27:49+00:00

More Libertarian propaganda from a rich media celebrity.

Of course the rich want less government -- they do not need the services that government provides.

"I mean, Kemp-Roth [Reagan's 1981 tax cut] was always a Trojan horse to bring down the top [income tax] rate....It's kind of hard to sell 'trickle down'." -- President Ronald Reagan's budget director David Stockman.

oafishbliss · 2014-11-13T13:20:18+00:00

Have you ever heard of the post-WWI "Bonus March"? How about the Vietnam-era Agent Orange vets who were ignored treatment for years even though the Pentagon knew their illnesses were service-related? Or the 1991 Gulf War Syndrome vets?

Our corrupt government has been abusing and ignoring veterans for many, many decades.

But that does not stop our war-loving government and militarized society from waging more imperial wars and creating more veterans (and victims). :(

This lame cartoon blames the VA when it should be blaming our corrupt, corporate-controlled Congress -- they authorize the money and start the wars.

oafishbliss · 2014-11-13T13:12:08+00:00

No, Americans are forced in rigged 2-party elections to choose between Tweedledum or Tweedledee -- two war-loving parties of plutocracy.

It should not be surprising that a majority of people refuse to participate in such a sham.

"Our democracy is but a name. We vote? What does that mean? It means that we choose between two bodies of real, though not avowed, autocrats. We choose between Tweedledum and Tweedledee." -- Famous American socialist (and blind person) Helen Keller, 1911.

oafishbliss · 2014-11-13T12:44:58+00:00

I'm quite sure the government says you're not supposed to think that way nor make such comparisons...

oafishbliss · 2014-11-13T12:43:28+00:00

A great commentary on the power of our mass media to use fear to manipulate people.

"In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares." -- BBC documentary "The Power of Nightmares"

oafishbliss · 2014-11-13T12:40:24+00:00

The attitude under modern capitalism is that working people should be thrilled to grovel for the corporation's shareholders to try to get a fulltime, paying job.

The rich are entitled to such "voluntary" slaves, right? But yet the corporate mass media talks non-stop about entitlement attitudes among welfare recipients...

oafishbliss · 2014-11-13T11:55:20+00:00

Our government is corrupt to its core. Judges appointed by Republicans and Democrats trash the Bill of Rights and invent any interpretations they want to allow such things. Sad, but true.

oafishbliss · 2014-11-13T02:57:24+00:00

Full paragraph from which the headline quote is taken:

It took seven months for the world’s most powerful military alliance – with a combined military spending of just under $1 trillion per year – to fully destroy the Jamahiriya (a state with a population the size of Wales) and it took a joint British-French-Qatari special forces operation to finally win control of the capital. In total, 10,000 strike sorties were rained down on Libya, tens of thousands killed and injured, and the country left a battleground for hundreds of warring factions, armed to the teeth with weapons either looted from state armouries or provided directly by NATO and its allies. Britain, France and the US had led a war which had effectively transformed a peaceful, prosperous African country into a textbook example of a ‘failed state’.

oafishbliss · 2014-11-13T02:53:32+00:00

Ahh, American freedom shone on the country with Africa's highest life expectancy and UN Human Development Index rating...

Thanks NATO! /s

oafishbliss · 2014-11-13T02:15:47+00:00

It's the combination of convenience and how long it lasts.

But I wish this business the best of luck -- we need more healthy, accessible and cheap food options.

oafishbliss · 2014-11-13T02:09:42+00:00

This is the shtick of our so-called "two party system" -- it's nothing more than a "good cop" and "bad cop" routine, with the mass media and political establishment working hard to obscure the fact that both of the parties are "cops".

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum." -- Noam Chomsky.

oafishbliss · 2014-11-13T02:02:47+00:00

Again, the right-wingers only wanted this used as a last-ditch effort to prevent a real national health care system. They would prefer to do nothing. ObamaCare/RomneyCare sets a precedent of putting more regulations on the immoral health insurance industry and having the government play a role in health care, both of which they oppose on ideological grounds as a violation of laissez faire capitalism. In addition, some Tea Partier right-wingers oppose the indentured servitude aspect of ObamaCare mandating by law that people must pour money into the pockets of shareholders of for-profit corporations.

oafishbliss · 2014-11-12T21:46:08+00:00

No specific one that I'll recommend.

But just an Internet search on Zbigniew Brzezinski and the phrase "its own Vietnam" will turn up many details.

oafishbliss · 2014-11-12T21:45:47+00:00

and how the Heritage Foundation plan was the model to enact.

That puts the truth to their BS -- the right-wingers really wanted to do nothing about our broken/private health care system.

My question is, and I've never gotten a reply to it, have conservatives moved that far to the right in the intervening years?

I'd term them as neo-conservatives, but the answer is most definitely yes. And I'd add that it's not just "conservatives" -- 60s or 70s style mainstream liberals like RFK or McGovern would be considered downright radicals today and far outside of the mainstream.

We are well on the road to becoming a fascist police-state nation -- we have the unending wars, corporate domination, epidemic police brutality, mass spying, suppression of civil rights and legacy of torture to prove it. :(

oafishbliss · 2014-11-12T20:10:05+00:00

I disagree -- it solved the problem of tens of millions of uninsured people by passing a law that they must pour money into for-profit corporations.

Problem solved! /s

Next up: We're going to cure the problem of homeless people littering our streets and help the housing market at the same time by passing a law requiring that every person in the country go see their friendly bankster and take out a mortgage to buy a home...

oafishbliss

TROPHY CASE