Blog Nods
by lizard
Americans continue to be poorly served by corporate media when it comes to covering what’s happening around the world. It takes a significant amount of active engagement to seek out and read alternative interpretations of current events. Unfortunately too many people either don’t care, or don’t have the time or resources to put forth the effort to get informed.
The best blogging is an often thankless investment of time, processing material, assembling quotes, linking sources, and providing commentary. One of the best blogs I have encountered in my relatively short time of active online engagement is Moon of Alabama, hosted by a sharp German blogger, “b”.
b has been directly instrumental in countering the hyped claims of the recent IAEA report regarding Iran’s bogus nuclear weapons program with a look at Iran’s nanotechnology sector. Gareth Porter even cited b’s blog here:
Iran has an aggressive program to develop its nanotechnology sector, and it includes as one major focus nanodiamonds, as blogger Moon of Alabama has pointed out. That blog was the first source to call attention to Danilenko’s nanodiamond background.
In another post, b takes a critical look at how western media is largely failing to provide an accurate context in its reporting of Egyptians back in Tahrir square, getting killed. He also points the finger at the Obama administration, providing, as evidence, a line from this Times piece, which he aptly dissects in his post.
[T]he Obama administration considered [the military] a partner that it hoped would help secure American interests.
Breaking the spell Obama still holds on too many entrenched thinkers with metaphorical skin in the game takes work, and one of the best antidotes is the daily lineup at Counterpunch, where, for example, one can inform themselves about the Obama administration’s disgusting display of bald-faced bullshit regarding its embrace of a Honduran regime that forced itself into power (with US blessings), and has since been the alleged perpetrators of 59 political killings just this year.
And this paragraph cites Wikileaks and The Nation reporting on how the coup opened the door for an increase in drug trafficking US officials were aware of as far back as 2004:
Recent U.S. diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks show that U.S. officials have been aware since 2004 that Facussé has also been trafficking large quantities of cocaine. Dana Frank, a professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz who is an expert on Honduras,summed it up for The Nation last month: “U.S. ‘drug war’ funds and training, in other words, are being used to support a known drug trafficker’s war against campesinos.”
It’s difficult for me to reconcile how US foreign policy can support an illegitimate narco-state puppet regime like the one in Honduras, while all I have to do is look to our local rag to see how domestic drug policy featureshow the feds continue to roll after their boss issued duplicitous rhetoric about respecting state law and those operating within those laws.
To grapple with what’s going on takes work. To provide a good local example, I’m not sure, without posts like this one from Pogie, if I would even know about Neil Livingstone, not to mention how bizarre and inexplicably unreported his bid for Governor has been. Spats aside, I certainly appreciate the information.
To round out this meandering post, I’m going to try and articulate something about the Occupy movement that’s been recently bouncing around my head.
Along with the change of weather, I think there may be some grains of truth behind the media depictions of changing dynamics at encampments around the country, and it might be worth considering acknowledging and embracing why that’s happening.
The spaces opened up through the seeds of a protest movement have been joined by all sorts of previously displaced people with few-to-no-other options. Before #OWS, these kinds of make shift encampments were known as tent cities, and they too were shuffled out of sight, albeit with less media coverage and general concern.
I say that because I get the feeling some of the early organizers may be struggling with how to keep momentum moving forward while simultaneously in the midst of supporting physical spaces where the needs are considerable as winter rolls in, and every misdeed a headline the media will smear the whole movement with.
In conclusion, there are no guarantees when it comes to our atmosphere.
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November 27, 2011 at 4:48 pm
OK, your provocative comment about people being under Obama’s spell worked. I’m provoked. I support Obama in 2012 without being under his, or anyone else’s, spell.
I can’t defend every lame foreign policy decision that the Obama administration has made, especially those having to do with Latin America. The US has a long history of supporting, and even installing, rightist dictators there. Apparently Obama, busy in the Middle East, has chosen to continue this support rather than being drawn into fights with mega-corporations, the defense establishment, and the powerful congressmen they control.
Whether you want to admit it or not, there’s an entrenched corporate-military establishment in Washington that even the president can’t take on frontally except at great risk.
Which leads me to ask you this: If you’d woken up in 2009 finding yourself the newly elected president of the United States, what exactly would you have done? Not what wouldn’t you have done. That’s an easy one. Just click on Counterpunch for a list of their Obama Sucks talking points.
I’d like to know exactly what you — President Lizard – would’ve done. Remember, the crisis is the worse since the Great Depression. There’s a War of Terror that the military, the war profiteers, and the congressmen they control, are very much committed to.
Would you immediately declare a cease-fire and order the troops home? How would this “cutting and running” be received? Would you pull the plug on TARP or refuse to bail out auto companies? How would that go over? Would you openly support leftist Latin American governments or insurrectionists? Would the American public, immersed in Cold War thinking, tolerate your doing this?
You and the Counterpunch people seem to think that since a unitary-executive model of the presidency has evolved Obama can do pretty much anything he wants to.
In fact he can’t. Since the day he became president, powerful economic and political forces, including nearly half of the American public, were immediately and very energetically arrayed against him. After 2010 the congress was against him. He’s had to pick his fights (like Don’t Ask) carefully. He’s had to settle for watered-down policies and continue, for the time being, bad policies that he doesn’t have the political capital to end.
November 27, 2011 at 5:07 pm
here’s a radical idea: Obama could have declared from day one that he would not seek a second term, because the things that need to be done to reverse the disastrous course this country is on can’t be done if staying palatable to the power brokers to get reelected is the main goal.
and remember, the lameness of this president is not relegated to just foreign policy decisions. Obama has also aggressively gone after whistleblowers, ratcheted up deportations, and has been terrible regarding environmental issues.
but he wants to get reelected, and that’s the best context to understand why he makes the decisions he does.
November 27, 2011 at 5:31 pm
But what, President Lizard, given all the forces arrayed against you would you be able to accomplish as a one-term president? Remember, if you bucked the system too much you’d have no allies in congress. You wouldn’t even be able to pull off something as weak as the ACA. Democrats would run away from you to protect themselves. Republicans would have a field day with you. The military would defy you.
I think you’re ignoring Obama’s many accomplishments (see sites like Please Cut the Crap) because you can’t stand his gradualism. Citing only his administration’s failures, you’re content to throw stones from a distance and hope the Republicans come to power.
November 27, 2011 at 8:04 pm
um, president Lizard wouldn’t accomplish anything, because he would be assassinated.
but you’re right, I detest Obama’s gradualism, because it’s the same gradual movement to the right that Clinton gave us.
November 28, 2011 at 2:49 am
As long as the Obama Administration leaves cannabis on schedule 1 of the DEAs criteria list, it is proving that hypocrisy, graft, and corruption know no party lines, Turner.
When Obama completely and totally shut out the public for the entire health care debate, he violated his promise to consider all sides. He promised that all sides would be heard and allowed to present ideas, but that’s not what happened.
Plus his record on civil rights is just horrible. It’s worse than Bush’ and that’s saying something.
As far as comparing Obama with the Repos running, I like him better. But not enough better to lift a finger. I know Montana isn’t going to send our 3 electoral college people to vote for Obama. So it’s just a waste of time and energy to be working for Obama here in MT.
I’ll put my time and efforts into places they will hopefully be more useful.
November 28, 2011 at 10:00 am
Here’s an offhand, rather disjointed response to your attack against Obama.
I of course don’t agree with your hyperbolic claim that the Obama administration’s record on civil rights is “horrible,” or “worse than Bush’s.”
You certainly wouldn’t say this if you were gay. Bush never would’ve reversed Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell, pushed for passage of the Shepard-Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act, extended benefits for same-sex partners of federal employees, or appointed more openly gay officials than any other president in history. And Bush wouldn’t have actively tried to repeal DOMA.
Obama tried to get rid of Gitmo by moving detainees to our country pending actual trials. His effort was frustrated by Republicans in congress, who were joined by Baucus, Tester, and several other Blue Dogs.
His DOJ is currently challenging the discriminatory “Papers Please” laws of several states.
He’s been on the side of women. He pushed Lilly Ledbetter through congress and expanded funding for the Violence Against Women Act. He nominated two women to the Supreme Court.
I’m not happy with the continuation of the Patriot Act, the DOJ’s defense of defense contractors in cases like Saleh v. Titan (a case that started under Bush’s DOJ), and the DEA’s attack on medical marijuana. In Obama’s second term, he needs to correct these policy errors. If Gingrich or Romney wins, he won’t.
By the way, so long as we acknowledge that terrorism is a threat to our country, we’ll need to continue an aggressive intelligence gathering operation to prevent terrorists from being successful. This may involve occasional violations of privacy rights, which are not absolute in the face of a real (not a concocted) emergency. But, of course, these violations shouldn’t become routine.
I’m not happy about what Baucus and his health insurance lobbyist friends did to single-payer advocates in the process that led to the ACA. But it’s not fair to say that Obama was behind this. His mistake was to defer too much to congress.
Like Lizard, you seem to think that the president has magical powers to make the congress do whatever he wants them to do. In fact, his powers are quite limited. In confronting important issues and facing a hostile congress, he sometimes has to be content with nibbling around the edges. Electing a good Democrat (like Wilmer) and others like her to the House of Representatives would help change things for the better.
November 27, 2011 at 9:34 pm
Citing only his administration’s failures, you’re content to throw stones from a distance and hope the Republicans come to power.
my hope in citing this administration’s many failures (or successes, if you’re in the upper echelons of this plutocracy) is to make one point absolutely clear: the insulated pockets of wealth, power, and influence that control the levers of the US political system do not care about Democracy or human rights.
November 28, 2011 at 1:07 pm
I wish Obama (and others) acted more like the Democrat I voted for in 2008. But I’m digging my heels in his favor. The reason: the right has convinced me I have to support Obama – disenfranchisement is not an option. Just today I read an analysis on a conservative Montana blog about a comparison between Herman Cain and Barack Obama. It reads as follows:
“Guess they can’t tell the difference between a real black American who grew up in the post-war South and the effeminate, elite, half white, half black product of a sixties Hawaiian, Indonesian, communist, anti-American culture.”
It’s attitudes like this that push me back to people like Tester, Baucus, and now Obama. Even if those three did things I really detest, I’m not yet so disenfranchised not to support them against the lunacy that awaits us with their opponents.
November 28, 2011 at 1:20 pm
http://2helenahandbaskets.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/2011_11-12-DNC-BimboCard-DECLINED.jpg
Here’s another offensive piece from the same post/blog.
November 28, 2011 at 1:34 pm
Turner,
Gradualism (or progressivism–is there a distinction?) is only an effective strategy if the sum of the gradualism is greater than sum of the regression.
I don’t know Turner, it is hard to get excited about small reforms when the big issues–the economy, jobs, homelessness, loss of civil liberties, perpetual war, etc.–have a far greater effect on people’s lives than what I have come to view as “social appeasement” (much of the gradualism you refer to).
Progressive politics and gradualism are losing the big battles, and are trying to maintain some sense of victory with the little ones. This is what breeds despair among americans who are suffering and are seeing their liberties and wealth dwindle, their homes and jobs lost, and their government the victim of a hostile corporate takeover.
It’s going to take far more than “Cut the Crap” style cheerleading to rally voters to Obama’s cause. WHich is unfortunate, because I really wanted him to succeed, and worked to help get him elected the first time. The future, to me, looks bleak, because no matter how many gradual improvements are made, I can only see that the country as a whole is headed in the wrong direction. This is why movements like the tea party and occupy spring up out of a desire to see radical change in our country’s direction. Fortunately, only one of those movements has been co-opted by politics and corporate capture.
Until the root causes of our national malaise are ferreted out and changed (corporate personhood, campaign financing, among others) this country will continue to head in the wrong direction… no matter how many “cut the crap” style appeasements and bandaids (TARP, auto industry bailout, Recovery Acts, etc.) are enacted.
Congressional approval ratings are in the single digits. That should give Obama all the impetus and cover he needs to pursue a vigorous and vocal populist agenda. But he refuses…
Sure, the notion of the unitary executive is overwrought. But leadership in a time of national crisis is not dependent upon the ability of the president to single-handedly change policy. Leadership sways the country to follow a course of practical action to solve its problems. At this, Obama has utterly failed. And apologists point the finger everywhere other than where it belongs. Once upon a time a sign sat upon a president’s desk saying: “the buck stops here.” When that sign disappeared, the country headed off on the wrong tangent…
November 28, 2011 at 5:58 pm
I doubt that Obama knew, when he decided to run for president, just how desperate the economic situation was. And when his advisors told him that remedial measures would bring unemployment down to 8%, he must’ve believed them. He was overly optimistic.
I also doubt that he knew how powerful and corrupt his opposition was. I think he underrated their willingness to hijack our democracy (through Citizens United), to abuse senate rules (by routinely filibustering anything not right-wing), and to spend millions of dollars smearing him as a non-American, a non-Christian, an Other.
So he fell short. He tried to close Gitmo, but Republicans and Blue Dogs like Baucus and Tester wouldn’t let him. He tried to get the Dream Act passed to treat the children of immigrants more humanely, but Republicans and Blue Dogs like Tester wouldn’t let him.
He tried to pass the American Jobs Act to put millions of unemployed people to work. But the Senate filibustered it.
Somehow he managed to get a few things, like passing the ACA and repealing Don’t Ask, done. He said no to the military and began withdrawing troops on schedule from Iraq. He’ll probably do the same thing in Afghanistan. And, oh yeah, his stimulus bill saved close to two million jobs and his auto bail-out saved maybe another million.
These are not “small things.” The economic measures kept our country from a depression that could’ve been as bad as the Great Depression. Gay people are better off now than they were under the Bush policies.
But progressives are hammering him for not having worked miracles. They should direct their anger at the real villains of the piece – Wall Street, the war profiteers, the health insurance companies, the fucking Republican Party – these are the people, not Obama, who want to destroy the middle class and further enrich the top .01%.
I think it’s cowardly to criticize Obama, who has had some success despite almost overwhelming opposition, instead of criticizing those who set out on the first day of his presidency to destroy him.
Progressives, by joining Obama’s right-wing enemies in demonizing him, seem to be OK with President Gingrich in 2013. I sure won’t be. And neither will our country.
November 28, 2011 at 6:57 pm
How have I demonized Obama in my comment? I think that he hasn’t shown very good leadership skills–that’s my opinion, not a demonization. And your attempts to use “doubts” about the scope of his knowledge during his campaign and early days in office bely any sense of reality.
Millions of people knew the things you doubt he did. And if he didn’t know the things you doubt he did, then that just points to more incompetentcy in his administration. And it smacks of intellectual dishonesty on the part of his administration to even hint or claim that is the case.
I’m not “hammering him for not having worked miracles,” I don’t expect miracles from any politician. I just want him to act like a leader, be honest with the American people, and articulate a clear path forward, and then use his bully pulpit to work towards those goals. But I don’ see that occurring.
Is it too much to ask that the president not abdicate his duties to the American people? I think leadership is the #1 public duty of every president to his people. Even a bumbling idiot like GWB knew how to whip the people into his neocon line: “you’re either with us or you’re with the terrists.”
Everybody knows that when it comes election time, the mantra is going to be: “it’s the economy, stupid.” Low information voters and independents are not going to care to hear the apologism for why the country is in the dire straights it is. The economy is going to suck, there’s going to be 9% unemployment, 17% underemployment, and the votes are going to show it. Pretending otherwise and trying to point to a handful of social agenda items isn’t going to change that basic fact.
Obama has one chance at getting reelected: run a populist campaign outlining the roots of our national malaise, and putting together a coherent plan to rectify. An election geared around trying to sell anything less than an economic/jobs vision is going to fail. These voters are going to say: “we gave Obama and democrats 4 years to turn the economy around, and they failed; we’ll try the other guy.” If dems can’t grok this concept, then they’re playing ostrich, and all they will be able to do after the elections is to eat their young.
And I guess that it’s ok if people want to blame me or to blame “progressives” for Obama’s potential reelection failure. Nothing I can do in Montana is going to sway that election. But as you suggest, I and my cohorts have been and will continue to “direct their anger at the real villains of the piece.” I just happen to think that the real villains, other than “Wall Street” is the corruption of our political process. And no matter who the politicians are, or who sits in the White House, as long as we have a hostile takeover of our political system by corporations, it isn’t going to get any better–it’s only going to get worse.
November 28, 2011 at 7:00 pm
Turner, I appreciate the earnestness in which you are trying to depict Obama as a doe-eyed newbie caught off guard by the sewer in DC, but in order for that to be plausible you have to forget Obama is a politician forged in the political cesspool of Chicago, and cured in the privileged smokehouse of DC.
you also have to forget that this alleged “Democrat” was the first president ever to retain the opposing party’s DoD appointment, Robert Gates, a man steeped in Iran-Contra subterfuge. that was an important message to send to the MI-complex: business as usual; the changes would be merely stylistic, but the targets are the same as Bush’s neocon PNAC handlers: Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Iran
it would be great if congress could take all the blame for Obama’s first broken presidential promise, closing GITMO, but to cast Obama as anything but integral in going along with supporting indefinite detention, you have to convince yourself all of Obama’s failings are because of his handicaps, and not because he’s just another duplicitous politician who sought power, achieved it, and is now doing the bidding of those who paid to put him there in order to maintain it.
there has been some window dressing that has certainly benefited people, and I really don’t intend to minimize or dismiss those gains, because they’re important.
but in terms of political currency, it’s being spent by apologists like you to counter those like me who persist in pointing out the failures that have a disproportionate chance of fucking up our country and our world.
and remember, Obama didn’t delay his decision on the keystone pipeline because he believes it’s an ecological disaster that will continue to send this planet into climate-changing chaos.
no, he did it because he’s a calculating politician who was more concerned that the political backlash (maybe from high-profile hollywood elites who joined the protests?) might hurt his reelection campaign than the long-term sustainability of exploiting every drop of fuel in order to keep the parasites at the top of the economic pyramid fat and happy.
November 30, 2011 at 12:01 pm
Liz: About Keystone: In today’s Dillon Tribune there’s a statement by the head of the Montana Chamber of Commerce calling Obama’s delay in considering the project “criminal.”
So here’s an ally in your war against Obama if you want one.
November 30, 2011 at 12:14 pm
C’mon, Turner. The “enemy of your enemy is your friend” brand of politickin’ really is an anachronism.
November 30, 2011 at 3:23 pm
Turner: I’m not engaged in a war against Obama. I’m just a lowly citizen who thinks Obama’s presidency has been a disaster.
November 28, 2011 at 3:21 pm
” Congressional approval ratings are in the single digits. ”
That doesn’t mean anything JC, because even if the US Public doesn’t like Congress as a whole, polls show that they still like ‘their’ Congressmen.
Obama’s strategy of running against strawmen is something I hope he sticks with.