The absurd “Global War on Terror”, initiated by handlers of Supreme Court-appointed President George W. Bush in the wake of 9-11, was quickly turned into framework through which the U.S. could wage war abroad and assault civil liberties at home.
After aggressive war based on lies, secret prisons and torture, as well as illegal spying programs on its own citizens and other blatant violations of the Bill of Rights, the Bush regime and its corporate collaborators received protection (and even “retroactive immunity”) from the leaders of the Democratic Party as soon as they came to power — upon winning the House in 2006, Nancy Pelosi infamously asserted that “impeachment is off the table” and, after winning the Presidency in 2008, Barack Obama directed the country to “look forward, not backward”.
Meanwhile, last week the hapless and narcissistic Congressman Weiner (himself an errand boy for Wall St. and AIPAC, btw) was pressured to resign by these very same Democratic Party leaders.
His offense? Sexting pictures of his dick, in violation of no laws whatsoever.
This comparison “summarizes everything one needs to know about our political culture“, suggests Glenn Greenwald.
Of course, by this point Obama has his own very good reasons for overlooking or condoning certain types of offenses while prudishly condemning others. For the current Imperial Executive has not only continued the criminal trajectory of the Bush regime, but escalated and expanded it.
Under Obama, the Nobel Peace Warrior, the U.S. is now at war in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, with “covert” operations in Somalia and beyond.
And in terms of assaults on civil liberties, the current administration has surpassed its predecessor in radical violations of civil liberties and the rule of law — whistle blowers are targeted by the “Justice” Department, Guantanamo is still open (despite celebrated promises to close it), Bagram’s population of extra-legal prisoners grows, U.S. citizens are targeted for pretrial assassination, and new wars are started without bothering to consult Congress. And all of this is justified by means of the continued use of the dark art of Orwellian Newspeek.
UPDATE 6.22.11:
Regarding today’s expected announcement of a “troop withdrawal” from Afghanistan, ThinkProgress has posted a chart putting the numbers in context:
The “troop withdrawal” that Obama is expected to propose today will leave “far more troops in Afghanistan than it did when Obama came into office and more than at any point during former president George W. Bush’s administration.”
Recently, I read a story about how many people identify themselves as gay that claimed by statistical calculation of census and other polls that 2% of the population is gay. Pundits, writers and critics were startled by the figure – it seemed so low. This brought up HUGE discussion.
It was seen as diminishing and received refutation from some parts of the LBGT community (if it can be said to exist). They were terrifically threatened by the smallness of the fugure. They immediately set out on damage control: about how the stats don’t reflect the reality many or most of whom (they claim) are in the closet because of this oppression. Some claimed (wildly, and without much support) that as much as 30% of the population is gay.
In the end, synthesizing sociologists settled on a figure somewhere around 5% – and still many people were surprised. People were surprised because of the sheer power of information propaganda of the last twenty years. I bring this up to point out a measure of the LGBT community’s success in the USA in struggling for rights, but as a statistician it points out something else: that the projection of their strength in numbers as a direct result of their campaign for rights and identity has ballooned out of proportion to reality.
By comparison we have an excellent control group when it comes to information propaganda.
Q: How many U.S. Americans are in the military?
Answer: around 2%
and yet the information propaganda generated by these 2% and their families (who may not be in the military, but are trained to parrot the propaganda brought to them by their soldiers) projects an immense BELIEF in the military and its goals upon our entire society.
At 4th of July parties around the country, soldiers and their families dominate the conversation about matters of state and war and are given credence and weight, when in fact the entirety of the military is a highly structured hierarchy which includes disinformation and propaganda based on a need-to-know basis(witness the belief that Afghanistan is the “right war” or the false claims of the existence of a “dirty bomb” or the mythical lies about Pearl Harbor or the sinking of the Maine among this community which persist).
Add to this that the military dominates the electoral process and voters perceptions of “realities on the ground” in the spheres of war and we have a serious problem.
We have come to the point – thanks to the wonder of the Internet and technology – that it is possible to know far more facts about the realities on the ground than most soldiers who rely solely on what the military tells them about any given situation.
Yet, if we are NOT in the military or are NOT gay, it is difficult to say anything about matters which concern these pocket communities.
We are being driven by information propaganda authored by a very few who project an image of our world that isn’t real.