Saddam Hussein and Capital’s Moral Defeat

Ecce Homo
by RICHARD MARSDEN

Consider the scene in Firdos Square, Baghdad, April 9, 2003: A statue of Saddam Hussein is toppled by US Marines, among a throng of rejoicing Iraqis. The event is immediately construed by Western media as a symbol of the fall of his regime and a happy ending to the war. President Bush declared it ‘a historic moment.’

Why has this belief taken such a hold on America? Even supporters of the war, when pressed, concede that there is no credible evidence to implicate Saddam Hussein or the Ba’athist regime with the events of that day in New York, rural Pennsylvania and Washington. An obvious explanation is that the Bush administration engineered this pretext to conceal its actual material and strategic interests in Iraq. If a lie is repeated often enough, people may eventually come to believe it. True enough, but there is something more, something else about Bush and Blair’s rationale for this war that so far has evaded its numerous critiques.

Suffer Injury: Inflict Pain

The moral connection between suffering an injury and inflicting pain was made famous by Shakespeare’s ‘The Merchant of Venice,’ circa 1596. Bassanio, a Christian merchant, borrows money from Shylock, a Jewish money-lender, using his friend Antonio as his bond. The penalty for a breach of this contract is a pound of Antonio’s ‘fair flesh, to be cut off and taken in what part of your body pleaseth me.’ When Bassanio defaults on the loan, Shylock refuses offers of financial compensation from third parties and insists on his pound of flesh. Why? Shylock refuses to answer this question—‘say it is my humour’—but it is because he wants the pleasure of inflicting suffering.

Shakespeare’s play is often interpreted as a conflict between a cruel Judaism and a merciful Christianity, but that misses its point. Shakespeare has a Jew invoke his right to this feeling of power because the moral logic of equivalence between suffering and cruelty is Judaic in origin. The Jewish diaspora’s traders and merchants dispersed this moral equivalence throughout Christendom. It became the moral glue of commercial contracts, which rest on its sanctity. There can be no exchange without promises and no promises without trust. A contract is a bond is a testament is a covenant. Judaism’s morality underwrote Christianity’s commerce.

A man’s body was his bond long before his word was. In the early days of merchant capitalism, to secure a loan it was not uncommon for a debtor to pledge his body, or that of his family or friends. Instead of accepting compensation in the form of money or land, the creditor was entitled to the satisfaction of subjecting the body of the defaulting debtor to various forms of physical abuse. This included cutting from it an amount commensurate to the debt. Shylock was acting within his rights. This penalty was written into a lawful contract, recognized by the Venetian State, a centre of trade between East and West.

Americaʼs Festival of Cruelty and Humiliation

The stunning destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Centre and part of the Pentagon—let us leave aside, by whom—caused devastating symbolic damage to global capital and American military might. They lost their aura of invincibility. This, more than the deaths of 3,000 people, is what pained and angered the Bush administration. 9/11 triggered some fearsome Old Testament suffering among America’s estimated 90 million conservative Christians. This feeling was articulated and manipulated by one of their own, the President, and amplified by an abject news media.

America experienced great injury and loss of face and so, as an old-fashioned, born-again Christian, Bush felt morally entitled to inflict great pain and humiliation. This moral right and emotive need made superfluous any legal right. On whom? That was the problem. The presumed perpetrators of 9/11 were killed in the act. Modern Islamic militancy (‘Al Qaeda’) is too chaotic to be a satisfying target. For the moral logic of equivalence, however, ‘on whom?’ matters less than that the injury be expiated and honour restored. Shylock wanted a pound of flesh from Antonio’s body, but it was Bassanio who defaulted on the loan. Even if Saddam Hussein did not cause 9/11, he surely willed it. Iraq—a society brought to its knees by sanctions and rendered practically defenseless—will do, just fine.

What many find so objectionable about Bush is that his body gestures, facial expressions, his tone and timbre of voice revealed that he enjoyed the emotions of 9/11. He savoured his suspicions, grieved over what happened, brooded over what might happen, as if intoxicated on the heady brew of malice. Bush and Blair used 9/11, just as Obama uses it, as an emotional license to kill.

The invasion of Iraq was a great moral reckoning, a spectacular festival of cruelty that would shame the Middle Ages, the ‘Operation Iraq Freedom Show,’ scripted and staged like a Disney production.

It was cruel to subject Iraqis to stress by laying siege to their country for months and threatening them with the prospect of injury, maiming and death. The somatic cost of this psychological assault will be borne for generations.

It was diabolical to say one thing to Iraq while doing its opposite, as Blair and Bush did: to feign diplomacy knowing that come what may you will invade and occupy their country. ‘We beg you to disarm, so that we may better crush you.’ Had Iraqis handed in their knives and forks it would not have made any difference to Bush’s intent.

It was cruel to unleash the power of the most terrible military machine ever assembled on a proud people brought to their knees by twelve years of sanctions. They were bombed senseless. If this had been a boxing match, it never would have been allowed. It was, argued Pravda, like ‘the school bully picking on the weakest boy and setting upon him with a viciousness … as horrific as the savaging of a poodle puppy by a pack of famished and outraged Rottweilers.’

Those Americans traumatized by 9/11 undoubtedly enjoyed the Show, happy in the elevating feeling that America has vented its power against a contemptible enemy and a terrible injury has been healed.

Let us return to the multitude around the fallen idol in Firdos Square, Baghdad on April 9. Like the war itself—based on false pretexts, waged by a fictitious coalition—this was staged, a contrived photo-opportunity timed for prime-time American news. The tight TV camera angle gave the impression of a square full of Iraqis. A longer view reveals a small crowd of people, surrounded by empty space, then tanks, then more empty space, in a square cordoned off by US military.

According to then Defence Secretary Rumsfeld, ‘Watching them, one cannot help but think of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Iron Curtain.’ It was celebrated in Western media as a ‘momentous event.’ There were hundreds of thousands in Berlin the evening of November 9, 1989. There were no more than a few dozen Iraqis in Firdos Square on April 9. There were more off-camera journalists than ‘liberated’ Iraqis in that square. Those delighted Iraqis, it turns out, were militiamen of the Iraqi National Congress, led by Ahmed Chalabi, who was flown into Iraq by the Pentagon because he was Rumsfeld’s choice to become Iraq’s next president. One of his aides can be clearly seen in stills of the TV footage.

This symbolic phony fall marked, not the end of the war—the deaths continued—but the beginning of the end of the Festival of Pain. It was not a case of ‘now they are free,’ but ‘we have seen enough suffering and feel better now.’

The Demonized and the Downtrodden

The fall-back position for apologists of the war against Iraq is that that at least it got rid of a ‘brutal dictator.’ It is a safe bet, however, that as many lies have been told about Saddam Hussein as there have about WMD. Aggressors always vilify their enemies, to legitimate their own aggression. The dead giveaway is that only a leader of real worth would warrant the volume of righteous defamation heaped upon him by Bush and Blair.

Arabs and Muslims, especially those in Iraq, are much better placed to evaluate Saddam’s actions than Westerners. Sustaining ‘our’ goodness, the moral validity of what ‘we’ have done to the people of Iraq, requires sustaining Saddam Hussein’s ‘evilness’. Seldom has one person been subjected to such an enormous campaign of vilification for such immoral ends.

According to T.E. Lawrence (‘of Arabia’ fame—that British-born, but American-made hero), holding together the fragments out of which Iraq was created after World War One, will take a genius, a prophet, or a great criminal. Time will tell into which category belongs Hussein. Undoubtedly, he was a hard man, but Arabia is a land of hard truths and the British created a country which only a hard man could rule. Saddam Hussein was a product of Iraq’s bloody history. His will was the glue necessary to hold together these fragments. Only someone willfully blind to Iraq’s brutal history could regard him as its cause.

Saddam Hussein threatened Anglo-American interests, not because he possessed WMD or because he sponsored global terrorism—he did neither—but because he was unafraid of Israeli-Anglo-American military might and was the only Arab leader to risk courting its wrath by actively supporting the Palestinian cause. Like Iraq itself, he was unbowed and unbroken, despite the Gulf War and 12 years of blockade and bombing. Paradoxically, his very existence was a moral threat to Israeli-Anglo-American interests. That is why he had to be destroyed.

So President Bush and Prime Minister Blair mobilized the most powerful and expensive force in the history of civilization and sent it half-way around the world to win freedom for Iraqis and to build them a democracy.

As if Iraqis were incapable of choosing and fighting for their own future. Perhaps they had chosen to live in an independent country with Saddam Hussein over living in subjugation under an occupying army.

As if present day British and American democracies are not products of revolutions and centuries of bloody struggle. As if these countries—which acted in flagrant disregard of international law—are models of democracy and freedom.

Well, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis resisted this occupation and these Anglo-American democrats killed and maimed them. Every one, someone’s father, brother, son. As if the Iraqi army—woven out of family, clan and tribal bonds—could be separated from the people.

The racist sentiment behind the invasion attempts to explain away this resistance as being inspired by fear of Saddam Hussein. But the pragmatics of fear does not begin to explain the passion, tenacity and courage of Iraqis in the face of that merciless onslaught. To live, they had only to surrender. Yet the number of Iraqis who did so is negligible. No: they fought for themselves, their families, their tribe, their land, their country. And now they are dead. ‘Liberated.’

The Divinity of Capital and its Moral Defeat

Bush and Blair are right about one thing: this was and is a war about morality. Immediately following 9/11, in a rare unscripted moment, Bush announced a ‘crusade’ to punish the perpetrators. The word was quickly removed from his lexicon by his handlers, but it is precisely the right one to describe the assault on Iraq.

This was a crusade in the service of the divinity of capital, a vengeful, jealous god before which no other god may stand. Capital thrives in Christian countries, but it is rooted in Judaism’s moral logic of equivalence. That is why this crusade was blessed in Jerusalem, against the opposition of Rome, and why America unconditionally supports and funds Israel, the only Jewish State in the world: it is capital’s moral, spiritual home. Christianity emerged out of Judaism. Having travelled the globe in the service of commerce, this morality came home to assuage America’s pain and do battle with ‘evil.’

Ecce Homo: Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein’s staged and scripted trial and execution were intended as the concluding acts in this morality play. The court which tried him, the Iraqi High Tribunal, was neither independent of the occupying power nor was it impartial. Those privy to its inner workings know that the trial was run by American lawyers in the US Embassy in the fortified Green Zone. You need moral as well as legal authority to hang someone and this court had neither. Hussein made that plain. Like the Resistance, he was unbowed, defiantly spitting truths at the occupiers and their agents.

Forget the contrived fall of Saddam Hussein’s statue. Pay attention to Saddam Hussein’s actual death, for it is not often one witnesses the defeat of a morality. That’s what Saddam Hussein, feet shackled, hands tied, inflicted on the West, in those moments before he was hung, on the first day of Eid ul-Adha, 2006. Courtesy of digital technology, this extraordinary event was witnessed by millions around the world.

The execution of Saddam Hussein was the ‘justice’ to which he was brought. The stage was set for his final humiliation. To his credit, he refused to follow the script and turned the tables on those who brought him there. He denied them the pleasure of feeling morally superior.

Saddam Hussein’s life will be argued over for many years, but on this everyone can agree: Nothing reveals a man’s moral character so much as having his own death staring him in the face. Few among us will die on the gallows, but we must all face death alone. Nothing, no-one can help us. We must rely entirely on our inner resources.

How a person faces death reflects how they have lived their life. Dying, like living, is a skill requiring disciplined practice. Some fall apart, blame others and turn this way and that looking for an escape. Others grimly batten down the hatches, stare blankly ahead and let death overtake them. The exceptional ones go to meet it with equanimity.

Ponder for a moment how Blair and Straw, Bush and the White House Iraq Group—Rove, Hughes, Matalin, Card, Wilkinson, Calio, Rice, Hadley, Libby and Gerson—will behave when their own reckoning comes. As Saddam Hussein was bravely greeting his death, Tony Blair was safe in the arms of America, staying at the home of a celebrity, Robin Gibb, in Florida.

Knowing you are about to be hung by your enemies following a fraudulent trial, at the behest of foreign invaders who have destroyed your country, would tax the moral resources of a saint. Or, in this case, a martyr. Saddam Hussein demonstrated how to die with courage, honour and dignity.

Ordinarily, at an execution, the condemned man is hooded or blindfolded, to hide his shame, to spare him sight of his own death rushing towards him. But Saddam forewent this. He stood bare-faced, facing death, not hiding from it. His constrained body emphasized the expressions of his face. It showed no sign of fear, or submission to the power about to kill him. His eyes did not stare into the void. He listened attentively to what his executioner said to him. He is quick-witted to the end, rising above the verbal barbs of his tormentors.

It was his executioners who were hooded. They could see, but not be seen. Ostensibly, this was for fear of reprisals. And yet they stood and moved furtively, like guilty men. The arrangement of their bodies lacked order. They moved as if their hoods were to spare us the sight of their wretchedness.

If ever a death symbolized the spirit of resistance in Iraq, this was it. Saddam Hussein, surrounded by hostile men, about to be lynched, refused to be terrorized. America lifts up its skirts at the mere idea of danger and sees terror around every corner. It’s the old story about the American State: militarily strong, morally weak.

This was the death of a man of exceptionally strong will and courage. It was a death that shamed all those who slandered how he lived. Is this the behavior of a man who would hide in a hole in the ground to evade capture by the Americans? It gave the lie to that piece of propaganda.

The entire weight of that wave of Anglo-American moral superiority crashed down on Saddam Hussein and the whole world saw he did not flinch. That was the moral defeat of these forces, right there, staring us in the face.

There is a precedent. An occupying power hands over a man to his enemies who taunt, mock and then execute him. Where have we heard this before? Bush and Blair should know the answer—two thousand years ago in Roman-occupied Palestine. Jesus was sacrificed to atone for the sins of the guilty.

For what or whom was Saddam Hussein sacrificed? Certainly not for what he did to Iraqis—for that Bush and Blair would hang a hundred times over. He was hung because he was unafraid of the West’s military might and because his very existence was a moral threat to Anglo-Israeli-American interests.

But this gambit backfired. Saddam Hussein’s resistance broke that moral wave. The tide changed, returned to from whence it came, and is rising. Resistance too has come home, to every city in the West and the spirit of insurrection is growing. Those responsible for the carnage in Iraq face their own reckoning.

Final Letter from President Saddam Hussein to the People of Iraq.

Dr.  Richard Marsden is an Associate Professor in the Centre for Integrated Studies at Athabasca University.

Note

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Obama Year Three: Continuing His Rogue Agenda

By Stephen Lendman

In 2011, Obama continued the destructive pattern he followed in years one and two. Throughout his tenure, he’s done what supporters thought impossible.

Across the board on domestic and foreign issues, he governed to the right of George Bush. He’s waged multiple imperial wars, plans others, looted the nation’s wealth, wrecked the economy, consigned growing millions to impoverishment without jobs, and institutionalized tyranny to target dissenters challenging political corruption, corporate crooks, or abuse of power lawlessness.

He also promotes regime change in Syria, Iran, Venezuela, Lebanon, and other independent states. In addition, he targets Russia’s military strength and China’s growing economic might. At the same time, he supports ruthless, corrupt tyrants.

Moreover, he authorized indefinitely detaining anyone called a national security threat without charge (including US citizens). He continues Bush’s rendition and torture policies, authorized killing US citizens abroad, (like Anwar Al-Awaki for opposing America’s belligerency), and deployed Special Forces death squads covertly to 120 or more countries.

Notably, he destroyed hard won labor rights, wants education commodified and made another business profit center, and wages war on whistleblowers, dissenters, Muslims, Latino immigrants, and environmental and animal rights activists called terrorists.

Throughout his tenure, he’s governed lawlessly for the monied interests that own him. He hasn’t disappointed at the expense of core constituents and others deserving better.

Year three: Obama’s destructive agenda continued.
Obama’s Anti-Progressive Agenda

In year three, like years one and two, he’s been anti-progressive, hard-right, reactionary, belligerent, and pro-corporate. He’s pursued anti-populist policies favoring wealth and privilege, not social justice when more than ever it’s needed. 

In contrast, progressive change demands social reforms benefitting ordinary Americans, citizens having more control over government, establishing comprehensive education and universal healthcare as fundamental rights, curbing excessive corporate power, purging corruption and waste, and ending imperial wars that ravage the world one country at a time or in multiples.

It also advocates supporting organized labor, preventing exploitation of children, workers and minorities, environmental conservation, equity and justice, and other democratic values.

In contrast, Obama supports wealth and power, not populist change. Throughout his tenure, he’s been pro-war, pro-business (with Wall Street atop the pecking order), anti-dissent, anti-democratic, anti-freedom, anti-civil and human rights, anti-environmental sanity, and anti-government of, by and for the people. 

After winning the most sweeping non-incumbent victory in over 50 years, he broke every major promise made, imposed austerity when stimulus is needed, escalated imperial wars, and hardened repression to curb popular anger.

James Petras calls him “the perfect incarnation of Melville’s Confidence Man. He catches your eye while he picks your pocket. He gives thanks as he packs you off to war.”

He spurns human need, rule of law principles, other democratic values, and right over wrong. Supporters expecting change in year four or a second term are delusional and misguided. In fact, his worst policies lie ahead. 

Obamanomics: Waging War on American Workers

In April 2011, Obama announced $4 trillion in largely social spending budget cuts over the next 12 years. In December 2010, with Democrats controlling both Houses, he extended Bush’s super-rich tax cuts after saying he’d end them. 

He also agreed to $38 billion in vital social services cuts after promising to preserve them. They include:

  • $3.5 billion from Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) funding; 
  • $2.2 billion from nonprofit health insurance cooperatives;
  • $600 million from community healthcare centers; 
  • $1 billion from HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and other disease prevention programs; 
  • $1.6 billion from EPA’s clean/safe drinking water and other projects; 
  • $950 million from community development grants;
  • $504 million from nutrition aid for poor Women, Infants, and Children (WIC);
  • $500 million from education programs;
  • $390 million from home heating subsidies to the poor, as well as $2.5 billion for the Low Income Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) announced in February; 
  • $350 million from labor programs, including grants for community service jobs for seniors;
  • other social service cuts; 
  • $786 million from FEMA first-responder funding; 
  • $407 million from energy efficiency and renewable energy programs;
  • $260 million from National Institutes of Health (NIH) medical research;
  • $127 million from the National Park Service; and
  • billions less for public infrastructure and transportation spending, while increasing war appropriations by multiples more, including for conquering and controlling Libya.

Moreover, Obama agreed to more draconian FY 2012 cuts and corporate tax breaks as part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling before reaching its mid-May limit. More as well over the next 12 years, including:

  • $4 trillion overall;
  • $770 billion from education, environmental, transportation, and other infrastructure cuts, as well as lower wages and benefits for federal workers when they need more, not less. 
  • $480 billion from Medicare and Medicaid, besides another $1 trillion from Obamacare;
  • $360 billion from mandated domestic programs, including food stamps, home heating assistance, income for the poor and disabled, federal pension insurance, and farm subsidies; and
  • $400 billion from military-related spending from unneeded weapons, as well as healthcare and other benefits for active service members and veterans.

Priority Pentagon items remain untouched to assure annual budget increases, generous supplemental add-ons, and secret open-checkbook intelligence allocations for numerous nefarious purposes.

As a result, people needs are on the chopping block for elimination to satisfy the insatiable appetites of Wall Street, war profiteers, other corporate favorites, and America’s super-rich. Obama’s fully on board.

Eliminating Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Public Pensions 

Political Washington hard-liners want them ended to transfer maximum public and private wealth to the recipients explained above.

Claims about Social Security and Medicare going broke are duplicitous. In fact, both programs are sound when responsibly administered. Nonetheless, they’re on the chopping block for elimination, beginning with benefit cuts, then privatizations to let corporate crooks profit at the expense of beneficiaries. 

Obama tasked two deficit hawks for the job. They head his National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (NCFRF) – former Senator Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, former Clinton White House Chief of Staff. They’re part of an 18-member team of like-minded members.

They recommended sharp tax reductions for business and super-rich elites. They also want deep Medicare cuts, co-pay increases, Social Security’s retirement age raised, and lower cost-of-living increases among other draconian proposals harming ordinary people enormously.

They’re coming and much more under bipartisan agreement to slash trillions of dollars from domestic spending over the next decade.

By law, automatic $1.2 trillion in cuts over 10 years will start in 2013. They’re to be equally divided between defense and domestic programs.

In fact, expect sustained military spending at the expense of gutting America’s social contract. Either way, lost purchasing power means less spending, fewer jobs, and greater public anger than today’s high levels.

In fact, deficit cutting is secondary. Key is protecting corporate handouts and Bush era tax cuts, as well as expanding them for business and upper-bracket earners.

Obama supports making ordinary Americans and seniors bear the burden so corporations and rich folks are spared. As usual, he talks tough, then caves, no matter the harm and injustice caused 

America’s Permanent War Agenda 

In inflation adjusted dollars, annual defense spending more than doubled under George Bush. They’ve kept rising under Obama despite growing budget cutting pressures, at a time America’s national debt burden is much higher than acknowledged. 

It hardly matters, given the military/industrial complex’s power to demand what it wants with Obama in tow to provide it. He also advanced America’s imperium destructively across North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia to Russia’s borders.

After a decade, Afghanistan is now America’s longest war. No end of conflict is in sight. Withdrawing US forces from Iraq concealed their regional repositioning and continued presence on major bases America will keep operating.

In fact, increased force levels are planned on one or more Libyan bases, larger contingents in Kuwait, expanded ties with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the UAE and Oman, and a greater overall regional footprint to establish an enhanced “security architecture” to integrate air, ground, and naval units for future combat missions.

Throughout 2011, Obama bears direct responsibility for committing one of history’s greatest crimes against Libya. NATO’s killing machine under US direction dispatched truth by calling naked aggression against a nonbelligerent country the responsibility to protect.

When is war not war? It’s when cold-blooded killing is called the right thing. It’s when major media scoundrels cheerlead it, lies substitute for truth, and when public apathy lets criminal politicians, crime boss presidents, and NATO killers cause mass deaths, destruction and human misery with impunity.

Objectives included replacing an independent regime with a client one; colonizing, occupying, pillaging, and raping Libya for profit; controlling its resources; excluding China and Russia from access; privatizing its enterprises; exploiting its people; ending Jamahiriya social benefits; and letting America establish strategically located North African bases among other reasons for waging war.

Also at issue is Washington’s Greater Middle East agenda. One country at a time is ravaged toward achieving America’s goal of unchallenged regional dominance to Russia and China’s borders.

Years earlier, constructive chaos was planned to redraw regional lines to achieve key geopolitical goals. Wars followed, shifting from one target to another. Obama’s pursued them more aggressively than Bush and plans more, no matter their lawlessness or body count.

Syria’s now targeted. Washington replicated its Libya model. Heavily armed insurgents are involved. So are Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon’s March 14 alliance, other Arab League partners, and Israel.

Regime change is planned, with or without war. Expect it if other measures fail. Internal and external forces are involved. In Libya, NATO formed the Transitional National Council (TNC) to replace Gaddafi and Jamahiriya government. Proxy Syrian National Council (SNC) members were enlisted to replace Bashar al-Assad’s regime after it’s ousted.

Disturbing reports surfaced about hundreds of US and NATO Special Forces massed on Syria’s border. Using them perhaps with air power is planned if sanctions and internal insurgency fail.

Anti-Iranian rhetoric is also heated. America claims Tehran threatens world peace. In October, Washington falsely charged Iran with plotting to kill Saudi Arabia’s US ambassador. 

In November, outdated, forged, long ago discredited, and perhaps nonexistent documents were used to claim Iran’s developing nuclear weapons. According to America’s latest March 2011 intelligence estimate, no credible evidence proves it. Instead, baseless accusations may precede replicating Libya’s model to target Iran belligerently.

On December 15, Manhattan Federal Judge George Daniels said he’ll sign an order accusing Iran, Hezbollah, and Al Qaeda of 9/11 responsibility.

In response to a lawsuit brought by family members of 9/11 victims, he claimed Iran provided material support to Al Qaeda, based on spurious testimonies from three Iranian defectors whose affidavits remained sealed during court proceedings.

Testimonies given were false. Iran, Hezbollah and Al Qaeda had nothing to do with a plot hatched in Washington to initiate America’s global war on terror. Ravaging the world one country at a time was planned. Syria and Iran may be next.

Supporting Dangerous Nuclear Power 

Despite Fukushima’s multiples worse disaster than Chernobyl, Obama supports jump-starting nuclear power construction. In 2008, candidate Obama said unless a “safe way to produce (and store) nuclear energy (is found), then absolutely we shouldn’t build more plants….I am much more interested in solar and wind and bio-diesel (to produce) clean energy and (new) jobs.”

At the same time, he accepted generous industry contributions, as well as earlier for his 2004 Senate campaign. As president, he now supports tens of billions of dollars in industry loan guarantees for new facilities – free money. He’s committed to accelerating new construction. It’s been halted since Three Mile Island in 1979. Numerous takers are lining up to take advantage.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu and other officials downplay the hazards, including 23 US nuclear plants at 16 locations using the same failed GE-designed Mark 1 containment vessels as Fukushima. Earlier, the NRC called them susceptible to explosions and failure because of cost-cutting design features. 

No matter the risks, Obama’s an unabashed nuclear power supporter. He believes no new regulatory oversight is needed. He’s endangering public safety promoting it. It should be abandoned in favor safer, clean, renewable alternatives.

Partnering with Israeli Lawlessness

Obama calls his commitment to Israel “unshakable.” Claiming he’s done more than anyone, he said:

“I am proud to say that no US administration has done more in support of Israel’s security than ours. Don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. It is a fact.” America’s “led the way.” Whatever Israel wants it gets, including more military and other foreign aid than all other countries combined.

No wonder James Petras calls him “America’s first Jewish president.” He “crossed the River Jordan,” backing its “colonial power in a strategic region of the” world, no matter how threatening “to world peace (and) democratic values….”

He partners with Israel’s worst crimes and provides assured Security Council vetoes of measures harming its interests. 

Like past administrations, he also supplies annual billions of dollars in aid, state-of-the-art weapons and munitions, the latest technology, intelligence, interest-free loans, special privileges afforded no other nations, and other generous benefits. 

Moreover, despite hard economic times, he approved more in Washington’s FY 2012 budget bill. It provides $236 million for Israel’s missile defense programs, including Arrow-2, Arrow-3, and David’s Sling. 

Beholden to America’s powerful Israeli Lobby, world peace and America’s own interests are threatened.

Jeopardizing Internet Freedom 

Candidate Obama promised to “(s)upport the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet.”

As president, his FCC, congressional Democrats, and political extremists threaten it. On May 12, Senator Patrick Leahy (D. VT) introduced “S. 968: Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 (PROTECT IP).” Referred to the Judiciary Committee, May 26 hearings were held. So far, no further action was taken. 

Leahy calls it a measure to “protect the investment American companies make in developing brands and creating content and will protect the jobs associated with those investments.”

In fact, it introduces new censorship provisions that violate First Amendment freedoms, without which all others are at risk. 

If enacted, Internet service providers (ISPs), search engines, and other information location tools must block user access to sites accused of very loosely defined copyright infringement.

On October 26, Rep. Lamar Smith (R. TX) introduced “HR 3261: Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA): To promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of US property, and for other purposes.”

Referred to the House Judiciary Committee, no further action so far was taken. In enacted, SOPA will sabotage the domain name system. It may also eliminate DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) safe harbors that spur economic growth and online creativity.

Along with Leahy’s PROTECT-IP Act, SOPA will force ISPs to disappear certain websites, endangering Internet security. 

At issue is targeting free expression. It’s not about curbing online piracy or promoting prosperity, creativity and entrepreneurship. An appointed Internet czar would decide if US interests are harmed at the expense of user rights and providers serving them. 

After promising to protect Net Neutrality, expect Obama to end it if these measures pass.

Legislating Tyranny 

In mid-December, Congress passed the FY 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. It includes little reported harsh police state provisions. After earlier promising a veto, Obama signed them into law. Another promise made, another broken. His betrayal record stays intact.

Henceforth, anyone anywhere, including US citizens, may be indefinitely held without charge or trial, based solely on suspicions, spurious allegations or none at all. 

No reasonable proof is needed, just suspicions that those detained pose threats. As a result, indefinite detentions can follow mere membership (past or present) or support for suspect organizations. 

Presidents now have unchecked dictatorial powers to arrest, interrogate and indefinitely detain law-abiding citizens if accused of potentially posing a threat.

Constitutional, statute and international laws won’t apply. Martial law will replace them if so ordered.

As a result, US military personnel anywhere in the world may arrest US citizens and others, throw them in military dungeons, and hold them indefinitely outside constitutionally mandated civil protections, including habeas rights, due process, and other judicial procedures.

In other words, presidents may order anyone arrested and imprisoned for life without charge or trial. Tyranny arrived in America. Abuse of power replaced rule of law protections, despite three post-9/11 Supreme Court decisions supporting habeas and other constitutional protections in civil courts for anyone charged with crimes. 

A Final Comment

Obama exceeded the worst of George Bush. With another year in office and likely reelection, he’ll continue waging permanent wars, flaunting democratic values, imposing repressive police state harshness, concentrating wealth and power disproportionately, destroying the nation’s middle class, turning workers into serfs, and making the country more than ever unfit to live in. 

It’s happening under a president promising change unless public outrage stops him. Sustaining pressure without letup is crucial for as long as it takes. There’s no other way.

Quitting’s not an option! There can’t be to have any chance for success!  

The alternative is Orwell’s vision of “a boot stamping on a human face forever.” If preventing that isn’t job one, what is?

Contributing Editor Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. 
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.                                  

 

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Obama and Geithner: Government, Enron-Style

21 December 11 

Strongly recommend this piece at the Huffington Post by Jeff Connaughton, a former aide to Senator Ted Kaufman. Jeff has long been one of the smartest guys on the Hill and is particularly strong on issues surrounding Wall Street and the regulatory system. In this piece, he takes apart the oft-stated mantra that what Wall Street firms did during and after the crisis was maybe unethical, but not illegal. He takes particular aim at Barack Obama, who tossed that line out on 60 Minutes in what I thought was one of the real low moments of his presidency. Here’s Jeff’s take:

Speaking in Kansas on December 6, [Obama] said, “Too often, we’ve seen Wall Street firms violating major anti-fraud laws because the penalties are too weak and there’s no price for being a repeat offender.” Just five days later on 60 Minutes, he said, “Some of the least ethical behavior on Wall Street wasn’t illegal.” Which is it? Have there been no prosecutions because Wall Street acted legally (albeit unethically)? Or did Wall Street repeatedly violate major anti-fraud laws (and should thus find itself in the dock)?

The President is confusing “legal” with “difficult to prosecute successfully.”

The notion that what Wall Street firms did was merely unethical and not illegal is not just mistaken but preposterous: most everyone who works in the financial services industry understands that fraud right now is not just pervasive but epidemic, with many of the biggest banks committing entire departments to the routine commission of fraud and perjury – every single one of the major banks, for instance, devotes significant manpower to robosigning affidavits for foreclosures and credit card judgments, acts which are openly and inarguably criminal. Banks and hedge funds routinely withhold derogatory information about the instruments they sell, they routinely trade on insider information or ahead of their own clients’ orders, and corrupt accounting is so rampant now that industry analysts have begun to figure in estimated levels of fraud in their examinations of the public disclosures of major financial companies.

Beyond that, as Jeff points out, Obama is simply not telling the truth about the insufficient penalties available to regulators. Employing the famous “mistakes were made” use of the passive tense, Obama copped out in his December 6 speech by saying that “penalties are too weak.” As Jeff points out, what Obama should have said is that “the penalties my own regulators chose to dish out were too weak”:

Moreover, the President is misleading us when he says that Wall Street firms violate anti-fraud law because the penalties are too weak. Repeat financial fraudsters don’t pay relatively paltry – and therefore painless – penalties because of statutory caps on such penalties. Rather, regulatory officials, appointed by Obama, negotiated these comparatively trifling fines. This week, the F.D.I.C. settled a suit against Washington Mutual officials for just $64 million, an amount that will be covered mostly by insurance policies WaMu took out on behalf of executives, who themselves will pay just $400,000. And recently a federal judge rejected the S.E.C.’s latest settlement with Citigroup, an action even the Wall Street Journal called “a rebuke of the cozy relationship between regulators and the regulated that too often leaves justice as an orphan.”

What makes Obama’s statements so dangerous is that they suggest an ongoing strategy of covering up the Wall Street crimewave. There is ample evidence out there that the Obama administration has eased up on prosecutions of Wall Street as part of a conscious strategy to prevent a collapse of confidence in our financial system, with the expected 50-state foreclosure settlement being the landmark effort in the cover-up, intended mainly to bury a generation of fraud. Here’s how Jeff puts it:

In Ron Suskind’s book, Confidence Men, he quotes Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner as saying, “The confidence in the system is so fragile still… a disclosure of a fraud… could result in a run, just like Lehman.” The Obama Administration is pushing hard for a 50-state settlement with the major banks for their fraudulent foreclosure practices, even though several state attorneys general have rejected this approach because, in their view, it would shield too much wrongdoing. Regrettably, Obama’s top officials and lawyers seem more eager to restore the financial sector to health than establish criminal accountability among the executives who were in charge.

In other words, Geithner and Obama are behaving like Lehman executives before the crash of Lehman, not disclosing the full extent of the internal problem in order to keep investors from fleeing and creditors from calling in their chits. It’s worth noting that this kind of behavior – knowingly hiding the derogatory truth from the outside world in order to prevent a run on the bank – is, itself, fraud! This is exactly the mindset that led Lehman to the abuses of the “Repo 105” accounting trick, in which loans were disguised as revenues in order to prevent the outside world from knowing the dire state of the bank’s balance sheet.

Now Obama and Geithner are engaged in the same sort of activity, only they’re trying to prevent a run not on an individual bank, but the entire American financial services sector. Geithner seems really to believe that if fraud were aggressively policed, and the world was made aware of the incredible extent of the illegality in our markets, that international confidence in the American financial sector would plummet and our economy would suffer – and suffer, incidentally, on Barack Obama’s watch. Better, apparently, the Band-Aid the problem now, and let the real mess happen later on, on someone else’s watch, or at least in a second term, when there’s no need to worry about re-election.

Of course, this is exactly the wrong way to go about things. If Geithner and Obama really wanted to convince the world that America’s markets weren’t broken, they would effectively police fraud, and by extension prove to everybody that at the very least, our regulatory system is not broken. By taking a dive on fraud, and orchestrating mass cover-ups like the coming foreclosure settlement fiasco, what they’re doing instead is signaling to the world that not only are our financial markets corrupt, but our government is broken as well.

The problem with companies like Lehman and Enron is that their executives always think they can paper over illegalities by committing more crimes, when in fact all they’re usually doing is snowballing the problem so completely out of control that there’s no longer any chance of fixing things, thereby killing the only chance for survival they ever had.

This is exactly what Obama and Geithner are doing now. By continually lying about the extent of the country’s corruption problems, they’re adding fraud to fraud and raising such a great bonfire of lies that they won’t ever be able to fix the underlying mess. If they looked at the world like public servants, and not like corporate executives, they’d understand that the only way out is to come clean. That they don’t look at things that way should tell people quite a lot.

MATT TAIBBI writes a political column for Rolling Stone.  He also appears regularly on left-liberal shows, such as Keith Olbermann’s.

Comments (Selects from original thread)

# Tippitc 2011-12-21 17:37

Isn’t this the same guy who campaigned on transparency in government?? Well, now would be a good time. And some truth and even a little justice would be a good thing also!! 

And if Obama wants to change his story maybe he should make sure the stories have a few elements in common!!

 +98

# Richard Raznikov 2011-12-21 20:08

Obama’s failure to pursue criminal penalties against the bankers and other Wall Street fixers is deeply offensive and morally reprehensible. The argument that prosecuting these people would jeopardize a ‘fragile’ public confidence in the system is a perversion of the actual truth: failure to prosecute is what has destroyed public confidence. 

Here we have a President who periodically expresses his dismay at the damage these people have caused while raking in millions in campaign contributions from the same people and surrounding himself with Geithner, Bernanke, Summers, and that ilk. 

It’s a disgrace. Obama has been an utter failure as President. It is pathetic that we seem thus far to have no better choices because he has forfeited the support of many people. 

I can’t wait to see his 2012 campaign swing into action. What will the new slogan be? “This time I really mean it”?

# Erdajean 2011-12-22 19:00

Well, it’s the same as when Obama decided — once in office — to “let bygones be bygones” with whatever criminal acts the Bush Administration had done. Those atrocities ruined us at home — where those with conscience still suffer about our “part” in them — and they ruined us around the world, where we can certainly no longer strut about as “the GOOD guys” — everybody now knows better. This guy reminds me of too many modern parents — who choose not to see the unbearable behavior of their children — which I suspect some of them actually secretly enjoy as vandalism against society. Purely sicko! When NOTHING is ever corrected, what can we expect?

 +19

# Michael_K 2011-12-21 21:47

“Here we have a President who periodically expresses his dismay at the damage these people have caused while raking in millions in campaign contributions from the same people and surrounding himself with Geithner, Bernanke, Summers, and that ilk.”

The latter named miscreants being un-indicted co-conspirators. Let’s DEMAND that O’Bama be challenged in a primary, so that we can present a proper candidate for the presidency.

 +18

# Dave45 2011-12-21 22:13

Connaughton and Taibbi indirectly call into question another social weakness in America, namely, the state of the legal profession. The goal of the legal profession seems hardly to be to bring about just solutions to social problems but, rather, to manipulate the law for clients (and, more especially, to manipulate the law for rich clients). It is not hard to understand why Obama, himself a recognized professor of constitutional law, seems to have such little interest in the law. Indeed, to express such an interest would be in open conflict with his deeper lust for plutocratic relationships that will further his political career.

 

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Call to General Strike

Please repost and forward!]

http://www.legitgov.org/General-Strike-November-28-2011
General Strike: November 28, 2011!
The only thing we have left is our labor. This is what we must withhold.

The debt “super committee” makes its budget recommendations on Wednesday, November 23rd, the day before Thanksgiving.

We know that the recommendations will include deep cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

We also know that the Democrats will by and large fold and accept the austerity package.

We know that Obama will approve of the budget recommendations. (Otherwise, he would have invoked the 14th Amendment and lifted the debt ceiling.)

Likewise, we know that as of November 23rd, ironically the day before Thanksgiving, the austerity package will be forthcoming and that the vast majority will now pay an additional price for the criminality of the corporate, military and financial oligarchy.

The vast majority will not have the corporate, military and financial oligarchy to thank on Thanksgiving.

Instead, the vast majority is being attacked by the corporate, military and financial oligarchy and its representatives in the White House and both houses of Congress. We are being forced to pay for the failures of the capitalist class and the precariousness of the profit system.

We are no longer represented by the U.S. government. Instead, the government is an instrument of the capitalist class and this class has nothing but its own interests at heart. This class will continue to force its will upon us. The two political parties are simply two levers by which this capitalist class controls the political processes in the U.S.

The only thing we have left is our consent to work. The only thing we have left is our labor. This is what we must withhold.

Likewise, Citizens for Legitimate Government is calling for a General Strike to begin at 7 AM EST on Monday, November 28th, 2011!*

Extend your Thanksgiving weekend by refusing the austerity measures to be imposed on the vast majority by the corporate, military and financial oligarchy!

General Strike, Monday, November 28, 2011! 

URL for this page: http://www.legitgov.org/General-Strike-November-28-2011

Media inquiries: media@legitgov.org

General inquiries: contactus@legitgov.org

Contribute to this action by clicking here.

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*Note, the CLG encourages ALL workers in the U.S. (and abroad) to join the strike. This is a unified strike of the entire workforce.

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Rahm Emanuel, new Chicago mayor, proving his scumbag credentials once again

By Sarah Jaffe, AlterNet

Nurses’ Union Condemns Rahm Emanuel for Chicago’s Arrest of Nurse Volunteers With Protesters

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been the most public enemy of the Occupy movement, but in Chicago Rahm Emanuel (left), President Obama’s former chief of staff, is quickly becoming his competition for the title. 

A late-night crackdown on protesters camping out resulted in the arrest not only of over a hundred protesters, but of nurses volunteering at a first aid station set up at the occupation. National Nurses United, the country’s largest union of nurses, condemned the arrests. 

“Even in wartime, combatants respect the work of nurses and other first responders. Yet Mayor Emanuel and Chicago seem to care as little about that tradition as they do in protecting the constitutional rights of free speech and assembly.” said NNU Executive Director RoseAnn DeMoro in a statement. “These arrests are disgraceful and unconscionable, and will not deter our nurses from continuing this mission, setting up the station again, and continuing to support the protests.”

The nurses’ union has set up first aid stations in five other cities that are currently seeing occupations, including in New York. 

Emanuel, who was known for his Wall Street ties as a congressman and as a member of the Obama administration, has initiated several crackdowns and mass arrests of the Chicago occupiers, who seem undaunted. Perhaps his crackdowns are an attempt to get protests under control in advance of coming meetings of the G-8 and NATO in that city in coming months. 

“Instead of showing off for world leaders, and paying allegiance to protecting the economic interests of the top 1 percent, Mayor Emanuel should stop, and start representing the 99 percent, the people for whom the Occupy movement has become a clear voice,” DeMoro said.

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