Just a short number again. Just flew in from tuckered-town. Man, my arms are tired!
Kopassus redux. Looks like Obama is seriously considering restoring funding to the Indonesian armed forces, including the notorious Kopassus organization, renowned for human rights violations in Aceh, East Timor, and elsewhere in and around the archipelago. The indefatigable journalist Allen Nairn has been reporting on this consistently for decades, and was recently interviewed on Democracy Now! about the administration’s flirtation with these pirates. Restoration of aid to Kopassus and other elements of the Indonesian military – responsible for killing hundreds of thousands – would not be good news, and it would be truly unforgivable for someone like Obama, who is not stupid and who spent some part of his youth in that country. There is no way that Obama doesn’t know what these people are about. And yet, he appears to be on the verge of going there anyway. What’s the excuse?
In a way, the U.S. empire is like this enormous killing machine. It’s got a thousand arms, colossal legs, and it moves across the face of the earth, crushing, grabbing, burning everything in its path. The president sits in a cockpit in its forehead and works the controls. Bush had a great time with it – invited his friends on board, and took it for a tear through Iraq. Then Obama took the helm. He promised to be more responsible. But … it’s still a killing machine, built to do only one thing. No matter what lever you pull, what button you press, it kills. So … he starts pulling, pressing, etc. Kopassus is on the other end of one of those levers, and he’s thinking seriously about pulling that one.
That’s one of our indirect wars. Then there’s the direct kind – Iraq and Afghanistan. I didn’t hear any reaction from anyone in the Obama administration to the footage released over the past week of civilians being mowed down by U.S. forces in Iraq. Pretty chilling stuff, in the sense that it gives you an idea of the rules of engagement our forces are (or were) operating under. We don’t see much of this kind of footage from these wars – once in a while, something slips out – but this is pretty horrendous. It’s ironic as hell – I read Krauthammer’s screed this week about Obama’s abandonment of America’s allies, complaining that he’s insulted the British, snubbed India, supported the wrong side in Honduras, and so on. Calm down, Chuck. He’s maintaining the empire just fine, trust me on this. He’s prolonging our pointless wars. He’s letting the Indians keep their bogus nuclear deal. And contrary to what you suggest, he certainly did not defend Manuel Zalaya in Honduras – the administration made some disapproving noises about the coup, but in essence accommodated it and its bogus election, and has since encouraged Latin American leaders to accept the successor government.
Killing machine forward, right? It’s the only direction it knows.
luv u,
jp
like no other time I can recall. America’s Oil and Gas Industry, Chevron, BP, and others, all trying to outdo one another with how dedicated they are to creating jobs, saving the environment, finding “solutions”, raising families, promoting public investment …. everything except generating massive profits, which is what they are ACTUALLY doing. I can’t imagine that, with all this promotional bullshit running on every channel, people aren’t getting more cozy with the idea of “drill, baby, drill”. (Sure, they always mention a full menu of energy options, including renewables, conservation, and others. But you and I both know they’re talking oil and gas.)
point in the ad he says, “Taxes never made anyone healthy.” Interesting statement. I guess he’s never heard of Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, various Health and Human Services programs, and any number of other government services, from OSHA to the FDA, that in some respect help us stay healthier as a result of tax revenues. Yeah, I know the ad is about a “sin” tax, but you can also see how taxes on cigarettes and alcohol have had a positive effect health-wise. In a sense, it’s just a way of having the price of something reflect the true cost. Sure, we want people to be healthier. But we also want to recover some of the cost of their NOT being healthy, like emergency care costs for people who sugar themselves into heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and the like. Don’t we?
And yet the philosophy continues to command respect. Somehow people like Grover Norquist and his ilk are still listened to, still asked for guidance. Meanwhile, the nation’s infrastructure is falling apart, our last major investments (beyond maintenance) in roads, bridges, tunnels, rail lines, etc., now decades old. A stiff wind storm knocks out power to whole states. Instead of investing in the future of this country, we’re putting band-aids over compound fractures. The most striking irony is that these programs are being starved by the kind of deficit hawks who constantly claim that they are doing this for our children and our grandchildren, i.e. not leaving them a huge debt. Fine. There’s a solution. Get people to understand that we need to pay for things, and that civilization is not free. That’s the central point of health reform, lackluster as it may be.