Just like the US has drawn Great Britain into its orbit of militarizing world society so to is it doing with our neighbor to the North, Canada. (Hey, I always liked that ‘neighbor to the North’ phrase!)
Here is an interview with prominent Canadian antiwar activist, Steven Staples that sheds some light on the situation UP THERE. It’s a good interview, though I think he takes a much more positive view of how the Peace Movement there is actually doing than it in fact might deserve.
For months it appeared that an expansion of war from Iraq into Iran was getting underway but there has been a change in plans. No, it wasn’t that the US has been flubbing up its occupation and humiliation of Iraq so bad that made the Powers That Be pull back. Not that at all. The reason to holding back on spreading war into Iran is for another reason. That reason is Afghanistan and the Pashtuns.
It seems that the war in Afghanistan is going as bad, if not worse, as the War Against the Iraqi People is. Due to geographical , social, and historical illiteracy, the US captains of War didn’t seem to realize that the Pashtuns are spread between 2 countries, and were not merely concentrated in Afghanistan. So now, the corporate political parties are calling for new blood, but this time in Pakistan!
Obama and Hillary are fighting to out do themselves on this one. Obama doesn’t want to use nuclear weapons inside the nuclear state of Pakistan, but Hillary wants to swing with all that we got. Or at least threaten to do so. So Time Out! No bombs for you yet, Iran! Wait a sec, Tancredo.
Pakistan is calling for Great Britain to pull out of Afghanistan. Musharraf and Gordon Brown now look like Larry and Curley Stooge trying to balance themselves to not get hit by Moe. What an episode! Forty million Pashtuns….
Hey, the Arabs still have some friends around in the world. But let’s face it, we can pick on Pashtuns until Hell freezes over without anybody saying anything. And nobody in the US will ever learn a word of their Pashtun language either. It will make it that much harder for reporters to ever get out of beddedness with the Pentagon if they can’t communicate with the locals, not even in Arabic! That will teach Al Jazeera…. Al, jeer us.
This new switch in alliances is already underway as the US government plans to increase the amount of nuclear tech it gives to India. Blowback, Blowback, Blow us away back! Clowns should never be given anything other than pies to battle with. Unfortunately, our ‘leaders’ got other toys. Uh, US out of Pakistan Now! The list just gets bigger and bigger.
Pakistan is crumbling into civil war. Yet another great victory for Homeland Security!
Gordon Brown has met the Bush-Cheney team and it is to be more of the same. Despite some empty rhetoric about world poverty and rethinking British role in Iraq, Brown has deliberately refused to order British withdrawal from Iraq.
Instead, Bush and Brown are ordering United Nations troops into Sudan, 26,000 of them in total at a cost of $2 billion dollars a year. What a miserable and stupid way to spend money which could have gone to improve the lives of the Sudanese instead of policing them. Yes, but that would not have increased imperial control over the region.
Gordon Brown is showing herself to be the Hillary Clinton equivalent for Great Britain, which is a lesson about how liberalism everywhere is nothing much more than a pillar and cornerstone of Empire. A lot of hope was put in getting Blair out of office as is the case in the US with the hope that change will come with merely getting Bush out of the presidency. The Democrats offer no more than the Labor Party has offered with Brown. Just more of the same.
If you are for an end to US imperialism running the world, it will take more than elections of liberals to get it done. Liberalism just does the run around but the Empire is kept running. Those who hope for change are just conned.
I don’t understand why liberals obsess about impeaching Bush? Just the word ‘impeach’ is something that has strong negative connotations like with the phrase, ‘they tried to impeach his credibility.’ In fact, isn’t that what the Republicans and Kenneth Starr did exactly when they tried to impeach Clinton? They tried to impeach Slick Willy’s credibility, besmirch it. Fancy that from such scoundrels as the Republicans? Besmirching someone’s character rather than honestly challenging their politics is certainly what they do best.
Let’s look at what’s wrong with the impeachment process. When Nixon was impeached, he was removed from the office of the Presidency, and then promptly pardoned for his actual crime of committing burglary! Wouldn’t due process be to actually have given him a criminal trial, convict him of what he did, and only then, remove him from office?
Imagine if other criminals were treated as Nixon was? Imagine if somebody burglarized your house and stole and otherwise trashed all your precious possessions inside. The police get the guy, but the District Attorney and the men in blue, before a criminal trial of any sort, have the guy fired from his job (assuming he has one other than fencing and burglary?). Then, the District Attorney informs you that this criminal who ransacked your castle has been given a pardon, and that there will never be any trial regarding his criminal act! Then the criminal burglar goes and opens up a big library (something presidential) with his name on it, and retires in bliss. While you, the victim, sit in wonder at the whole damn charade of process!
America, supposedly has one set of laws for all. We all know by now that is a total crock of shit, but still? Shouldn’t the public demand enforcement of laws on the books, even when the president, the vice-president, and his high officials break them? Torture, assassination, and robbery are a few of the crimes committed by Bush and his Klan. Shouldn’t we demand that they be criminally prosecuted rather than just timidly asking that Bush be quietly removed from office?
The most popular sign I ever use protesting against the illegal invasion of Iraq and looting of that country states, JAIL BUSH, FREE IRAQ. Can you get any simpler than that?
Does anybody really think that criminals are really afraid of ‘impeachment’? They make jokes about it down in Florence no doubt. ‘Hey, Guards, let me go. Impeach me instead.’ Why such a blatantly double standard of legal process when it comes to high officials?
Impeachment works this way. You first try to smear the character of a person you can’t get to totally go along with your corruption. The impeachment of the character, Slick, began way before the proceedings in the House and Senate. ‘His wife is a lesbian, you know? Slick sells used cars, etc, etc.’ And then came that magic moment! ‘Slick gets blow jobs! Under the table when his lesbian wife is out shopping.’ That’s what an impeachment proceeding is all about.
Any crimes no longer matter. Was it that Dick burglarized the Democratic Party HQ and slaughtered a few million or so? Or was it that he used foul language on tapes that allowed the character of this criminal to be impeached, even as his crimes went none prosecuted? Slick almost fell for ‘lying’ and getting a blow job without permission form the Senate and House, not for his invasion of Yugoslavia. Why are liberals trying to use such a travesty of character assassination against Dubya? Revenge? Because the guy sure has plenty criminal abuses against the People that he needs ot be prosecuted for instead. Impeachment is a shameful avoidance of what really should be done.
Let’s begin to demand that Bush, Cheney, Alberto Gonzalez, Rumsfield, and Rice be investigated for their criminal acts, and convicted of them. Just one example. Authorizing kidnappings and ‘renditions’ is a criminal act. If you are I were to grab somebody off the street, carry him to a basement, and then torture him as the Bush Klan have done with people, we would maybe even get the death penalty. Saddam Hussein certainly did. Shouldn’t we being asking at least for life imprisonment for our own officials that commit these exact same crimes. Aw heck, I’m even going to ask that Rumsfield be hanged by his neck, after the due process of convicting this mass murderer and master thief for his thousand and one crimes.
Asking for impeachment to be applied, and only alone to Bush, is a totally wimpy thing. A cheap revenge for those the liberal community oppose. Why not ask for the full extent of the law to be applied? Last, I am going to link with a speech that George Galloway just gave in Great Britain, and this great statesman does not call for impeachment of Tony Blair, British arch criminal. He calls for prosecution instead. That’s what we need to be doing here in America, too, when our corporate government creeps (pardon me, Tricky Dick) break the law. It’s due process.
I found this timeline which addresses the lead-up to what Franklin D. Roosevelt knew would be a day to live on in infamy. His.
1904 – The Japanese destroyed the Russian navy in a surprise attack in undeclared war.
1932 – In the Grand Joint Army-Navy Exercises, 152 aircraft carrier planes caught the defenders of Pearl Harbor completely by surprise. It was a Sunday
1938 – Admiral Ernst King led a carrier-born airstrike from the USS Saratoga successfully against Pearl Harbor in another exercise.
1940 – FDR ordered the fleet transferred from the West Coast to its exposed position in Hawaii and ordered the fleet remain stationed at Pearl Harbor over complaints by its commander Admiral Richardson that there was inadequate protection from air attack and no protection from torpedo attack. Richardson felt so strongly that he twice disobeyed orders to berth his fleet there and he raised the issue personally with FDR in October and he was soon after replaced. His successor, Admiral Kimmel, also brought up the same issues with FDR in June 1941.
7 Oct 1940 – Navy IQ analyst McCollum wrote an 8 point memo on how to force Japan into war with US. Beginning the next day FDR began to put them into effect and all 8 were eventually accomplished.
11 November 1940 – 21 aged British planes destroyed the Italian fleet, including 3 battleships, at their homeport in the harbor of Taranto in Southern Italy by using technically innovative shallow-draft torpedoes.
In a letter of January 24, 1941, the Secretary of the Navy advised the Secretary of War that the increased gravity of the Japanese situation had prompted a restudy of the problem of the security of the Pacific Fleet while in Pearl Harbor. The writer stated: “If war eventuates with Japan, it is believed easily possible that hostilities would be initiated by a surprise attack upon the Fleet or the Naval base at Pearl Harbor. . . . The dangers envisaged in their order of importance and probability are considered to be: 1) air bombing attack; 2) air torpedo plane attack; 3) sabotage; 4) submarine attack; 5) mining; 6) bombardment by gunfire.” The letter stated the defenses against all but the first two were then satisfactory.
The Secretary of War replied February 7, 1941. Admiral Kimmel and General Short received copies of these letters.
11 February 1941 – FDR proposed sacrificing 6 cruisers and 2 carriers at Manila to get into war. Navy Chief Stark objected: “I have previously opposed this and you have concurred as to its unwisdom. Particularly do I recall your remark in a previous conference when Mr. Hull suggested (more forces to Manila) and the question arose as to getting them out and your 100% reply, from my standpoint, was that you might not mind losing one or two cruisers, but that you did not want to take a chance on losing 5 or 6.” (Charles Beard PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT AND THE COMING OF WAR 1941, p 424)
March 1941 – FDR sold munitions and convoyed them to belligerents in Europe — both acts of war and both violations of international law — the Lend-Lease Act.
23 Jun 1941 – Advisor Harold Ickes wrote FDR a memo the day after Germany invaded the Soviet Union, “There might develop from the embargoing of oil to Japan such a situation as would make it not only possible but easy to get into this war in an effective way. And if we should thus indirectly be brought in, we would avoid the criticism that we had gone in as an ally of communistic Russia.” FDR was pleased with Admiral Richmond Turner’s report read July 22: “It is generally believed that shutting off the American supply of petroleum will lead promptly to the invasion of Netherland East Indies…it seems certain she would also include military action against the Philippine Islands, which would immediately involve us in a Pacific war.” On July 24 FDR told the Volunteer Participation Committee, “If we had cut off the oil off, they probably would have gone down to the Dutch East Indies a year ago, and you would have had war.” The next day FDR froze all Japanese assets in US cutting off their main supply of oil and forcing them into war with the US. Intelligence information was withheld from Hawaii from this point forward.
14 August – At the Atlantic Conference, Churchill noted the “astonishing depth of Roosevelt’s intense desire for war.” Churchill cabled his cabinet “(FDR) obviously was very determined that they should come in.”
On October 16, 1941, the Commanding General, Hawaiian Department [Short], and the Commander in Chief of the Fleet [Kimmel], were advised by the War and Navy Departments of the changes in the Japanese Cabinet, and of the possibility of an attack by Japan on Great Britain and the United States.
18 October – diary entry by Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes: “For a long time I have believed that our best entrance into the war would be by way of Japan.”
November 24, 1941, the Chief of Naval Operations sent a message to Admiral Kimmel in which he stated that in the opinion of the Navy Department, a surprise aggressive movement … by the Japanese . . . was a possibility.
November 27, 1941, the Chief of Staff of the Army informed the Commanding General that hostilities on the part of Japan were momentarily possible.
On the same day (November 27, 1941) the Chief of Naval Operations sent a message to the Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, which stated in substance that the dispatch was to be considered a war warning.
November 28, 1941, the Commanding General received from the Adjutant General of the Army a message stating that the critical situation required every precaution to be taken at once against subversive activities.
The Navy Department sent three messages to the Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet; the first of December 3, 1941, stated that it was believed certain Japanese consulates were destroying their codes and burning secret documents; the second of December 4, 1941, instructed the addressee to destroy confidential documents and means of confidential communication; and the third of December 4, 1941, directing that in view of the tense situation the naval commands on the outlying Pacific islands might be authorized to destroy confidential papers.
On December 6, the Japanese government began sending a long message to its diplomats in Washington. The last part of that message arrived in the early-morning hours of December 7. Japanese diplomats Nomura and Kurusu prepared for a final meeting with Secretary of State Hull, knowing that they were being ordered to break off all negotiations with the U.S. What they didn’t realize was that the same message had been decoded and rushed to President Roosevelt and to the high commanders of the U.S. Army and Navy. The U.S. was now aware that Japan might strike somewhere in the Pacific, but a warning did not reach Pearl Harbor until nearly 8:00 a.m., Hawaii time. By then, Nomura and Kurusu were in Secretary Hull’s office, and Japanese bombs were falling onto the neat lines of U.S. warships in Pearl Harbor’s “Battleship Row.”
At about noon E.S.T. (6:30 a.m. Honolulu time) December 7, an additional warning message indicating an almost immediate break in relations between the United States and Japan, was dispatched by the Chief of Staff. . . . The delivery of this urgent message was delayed until after the attack.
The Commanding General [Short], the Commander in Chief of the Fleet [Kimmel] and their principal staff officers considered the possibility of air raids. Without exception they believed that the chances of such a raid while the Pacific Fleet was based upon Pearl Harbor was practically nil.