Song That Never Ends

By Gary Egelston

Last time government shutdown occurred was in 1995, during the Clinton administration; healthcare, environmental reforms, and education were a few issues dividing elected opinion. And, while the two-headed monster chewed its own neck, mainstream media ensured that took center stage, drawing attention away from its tail. Democrats claimed their ideas helped the public, and republicans appeared as cantankerous assholes that cared little for the well-being of citizens… sound familiar?

Clinton was and is the poster-child for austerity, along with an extreme big brother state. After all, he heavily supported the original Patriot Act and NDAA (introduced on the floor by then Sen. Biden as The Omnibus Counterterrorism Act of 1995). ‘Reforms’ were pure donkey shit wrapped in a nicely framed message, with opposition from the right dividing public opinion, as one side appeared as a party acting for good and the other not. As it turned out, what the democrats and Clinton promoted was the advancement of corporatism, yet constructed debate blinded most to that truth. What he lobbied helped only the elite, and that is not coincidental. Clinton heavily championed corporate interests, as his reforms were nothing more than the progression of neoliberalism. Howard Zinn wrote many great pieces explaining it further if you want to research.

Today isn’t any different, as republicans appear obstructionist, and democrats the opposite. The main disagreement is Obamacare, another state capitalist idea that mandates corporate profit through government force, at the expense of people’s health. One side fights fiercely against it, creating a perspective that it must not be that awful if those assholes hate it so much. The other touts they care and frames a message of good vs. bad. Incidentally, it forces sides and the original wrong becomes justified, accepted, and not questioned by the general population.

Obamacare will stay, as this administration, along with Jonathan Gruber, ensured corporate interests were protected and pushed forward. While this issue takes center stage and distracts, a compromise will occur, resulting in further austerity guts to the economy. It’s a distraction designed to advance a neoliberal agenda. Watch, social services will take the biggest hit, with the rich getting richer. One hand washes the other; that’s how it works.

Daily Headline – 05/05/13

7 US troops killed in Afghanistan

Yesterday saw 7 US troops killed in Afghanistan which follows 3 British troops killed 5 days ago. Two US soldiers were killed by an Afghan soldier and the rest appear to have been killed by land-mines/roadside bombs.

There seems like no end to the Afghan war despite the casualty list on the ‘allied’ side in 2013 set to be the lowest since 2004. It’s not always easy to to know the impact of such deaths on the general public of the US and UK but their respective electorate must be getting fed up of seeing ‘their boys’ returning in flag-laden coffins.

Spot on casualty figures are hard (impossible) to get especially if you try to take into account the civilian casualties of war.

Costs of War put the current civilian casualty list at somewhere below 20,000 (that’s from start to now, 2001-2013). However the Guardian reckon up to 20,000 could have been killed just in the first 4 months!

According to iCasualties so far there have been 2215 US military fatalities, 444 UK military fatalities and 640 other military fatalities.

As the war continues, so do the fatalities.

Daily Headline – 04/05/13

65 year old woman “a danger to the American government”

FBI special agent Aaron Ford has labelled 65 year old Joanne Chesimard (aka Assata Shakur) as “a danger to the American government”.

Joanne (a black liberation activist) who now lives in Cuba has served 2 years in prison already in the US for her role in the shooting of a US cop 40 years ago.

That’s right people, we all knew the US government was weak and now it’s confirmed, even a 65 year old woman living in a 3rd world country represents a danger to them.

Joanne’s real claim to fame though is that now she is the first woman ever to be on the FBI’s most wanted list!

Guess the missing word!

US urges caution over __________

Guess the news headline, humorous answers welcome!

Daily Headline – 02/04/13

Support the troops!

US and UK troops are always in the press it seems for the wrong reasons, the constant abuses carried out be these representatives of their respective countries.

Support the troops? Support abuses.

It has long been known of the human-rights abuses carried out by the US and UK at Camp Nama in Baghdad but now for the first time two UK military personnel have spoken out to the Guardian about the abuses they personally witnessed.

The abuses they say they saw include:

• Iraqi prisoners being held for prolonged periods in cells the size of large dog kennels.

• Prisoners being subjected to electric shocks.

• Prisoners being routinely hooded.

• Inmates being taken into a sound-proofed shipping container for interrogation, and emerging in a state of physical distress.

For full details on the story click here.

Iraq; an illegal war carried out by thugs under the orders of callus morons.

Daily Headline – 27/03/13

Defense of Marriage Act in US supreme court

US gay couples continue their fight to be treated equally with their non-gay counterparts.

The Defense of Marriage Act denies gay couples access to federal benefits under its definition of marriage as a union between a man and a woman only which was brought in by Bill Clinton in 1996.

The US Supreme Court is currently deciding whether or not to scrap the law which denies federal benefits to same-sex couples.
Scenes outside the US Supreme Court saw crowds of both pro and anti gay marriage, mostly religious nuts vs progressives.

State laws are being overturned on gay marriage, in California it was legal for same-sex marriage but was overturned after after ‘Proposition 8’ won with 52.24% of the vote.

Supporters of gay marriage are hoping that the US Supreme Court (which works on the federal level rather than state level) will get rid of all bans on same-sex unions nationwide.

US continues to antagonise North Korea

By Leon J Williams

If a nation who had killed or injured over 1.5 million civilians just 60 years ago and then subsequently continues to carry out military exercises on your doorstep, you’d be nervous and on edge to say the least.

Well this is the situation North Korea finds itself in.

Much of the worlds media has focused on the tyranny of North Korea and the Kim family dynasty that has ruled North Korea since its inception.
And while it is true that The Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea does not belong to the people, is not a republic and is not democratic (1 out of 4 is true!) North Korea is behaving as anyone would and should expect given the circumstances.

In 1945 Korea was split in two without any consultation of the Korean people. The Soviets took the North and the Americans took the South in order to set up Korean governments following the end of Japanese colonial rule.

Who started the war?

Pretty much everyone will say North Korea and while this is true it does leave out an important piece of information. The North attacked the South because after calling for unity elections South Korea arrested North Korean diplomats, this is why the war started.

The war led to 2 million fatalities of the Northern alliance and 1 million from the Southern alliance.

Both sides of Korea have every right to be on edge but probably more so for the North, losing over two million people and most of the world against you, the biggest military constantly carrying out military drills by your borders, economic sanctions as tight as they can be with the only bigger step being a military attack.

The US is pretty much justifying the rhetoric coming from the North and the development of their long range missiles and nuclear weapons.

If the US backed down, there would be no justification for North Korea and its dictatorship to behave the way it is, meaning any retaliation to a North Korean military action would be wholly legitimate and accepted by all sane people of the world.

A fine example is today’s news where the US is flying nuclear capable B-52s around South Korea as part of joint military exercises amid the already extremely high tensions on the peninsula. It is like the US is deliberately trying to provoke a reaction from the North in a childish and pathetic attempt to to legitimise an invasion.

No to North Korean dictatorship and no to the US in North Korea. It is always the people who pay the ultimate price!

Daily Headline – 18/03/13

MI6 and CIA knew Iraq had no active WMD

From The Guardian:

Fresh evidence is revealed today about how MI6 and the CIA were told through secret channels by Saddam Hussein’s foreign minister and his head of intelligence that Iraq had no active weapons of mass destruction.

Tony Blair told parliament before the war that intelligence showed Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programme was “active”, “growing” and “up and running”.

A special BBC Panorama programme tonight will reveal how British and US intelligence agencies were informed by top sources months before the invasion that Iraq had no active WMD programme, and that the information was not passed to subsequent inquiries.

It describes how Naji Sabri, Saddam’s foreign minister, told the CIA’s station chief in Paris at the time, Bill Murray, through an intermediary that Iraq had “virtually nothing” in terms of WMD.

Sabri said in a statement that the Panorama story was “totally fabricated”.

However, Panorama confirms that three months before the war an MI6 officer met Iraq’s head of intelligence, Tahir Habbush al-Tikriti, who also said that Saddam had no active WMD. The meeting in the Jordanian capital, Amman, took place days before the British government published its now widely discredited Iraqi weapons dossier in September 2002.

Lord Butler, the former cabinet secretary who led an inquiry into the use of intelligence in the runup to the invasion of Iraq, tells the programme that he was not told about Sabri’s comments, and that he should have been.

Butler says of the use of intelligence: “There were ways in which people were misled or misled themselves at all stages.”

When it was suggested to him that the body that probably felt most misled of all was the British public, Butler replied: “Yes, I think they’re, they’re, they got every reason think that.”

The programme shows how the then chief of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, responded to information from Iraqi sources later acknowledged to be unreliable.

One unidentified MI6 officer has told the Chilcot inquiry that at one stage information was “being torn off the teleprinter and rushed across to Number 10”.

Another said it was “wishful thinking… [that] promised the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow”.

The programme says that MI6 stood by claims that Iraq was buying uranium from Niger, though these were dismissed by other intelligence agencies, including the French.

It also shows how claims by Iraqis were treated seriously by elements in MI6 and the CIA even after they were exposed as fabricated including claims, notably about alleged mobile biological warfare containers, made by Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, a German source codenamed Curveball. He admitted to the Guardian in 2011 that all the information he gave to the west was fabricated.

Panorama says it asked for an interview with Blair but he said he was “too busy”.

This will come as no surprise to anyone!

Daily Headline – 13/03/13

US; Catholic church to pay $10m to child abuse victims

The Catholic church in LA in the US is to pay $10m to settle 4 cases of sexual abuse by a priest which cardinal Mahony knew about and ignored.

The settlement means that the Catholic church officially accepts no responsibility or guilt. They have bought their ‘innocence’.

Court documents have shown that cardinal Mahony has protected numerous priests accused of sexual abuse over the years.

Attorney John Manly said:

“The person who could have stopped this in its tracks and prevented three out of four of these children from being sexually assaulted is now sitting in Rome voting for the next vicar of Christ,”

Between 1950 to 2007 over $2bn has been paid out to abuse victims by the Catholic church and as of 2012 over $3bn. This has led to several US diocese going bankrupt.

In 2004 it was calculated that 4,392 priests and deacons against whom allegations of sexual abuse had been made in the US alone.

Every continent has had sexual abuse on children carried out by the Catholic church, this must be stopped, Catholicism must be stopped, Christianity must be stopped, religion must be stopped.

Guess the missing word!

US state to allow armed __________

Humorous answers welcome!