American Families Pay The Cost of Long Foreign Wars

http://lomalinda.patch.com/blog_posts/american-families-pay-the-cost-of-long-foreign-wars

America Needs to Switch to Green Energy -- Now

The millions of gallons of crude oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico should be more than enough persuasion for Americans to kick their petroleum habit. They say that freedom isn't free, well neither is cheap gas. Cheap gas is paid for in American and Middle Eastern blood.

The American-led invasion of Iraq, which was first dubbed Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL), has cost about 5,000 American lives and between 100,000 to 1.5 million Iraqi lives. This was done so American companies could have access to Iraq's oil reserves,which are the second largest in the world.

The war made a handful of oil executives very wealthy, and also ensured that Americans could keep driving big-honking, gas guzzlers. It also means that the air is less healthy and the Earth's climate continues to warm up.

Americans need to get behind green energy, fuel efficient vehicles and public transportation. This is slowly happening. Ford is investing $135 million in plants that will produce more clean-energy cars by 2012. And President Obama has proposed funding a high-speed rail system. The switch to clean-energy cars would also be a huge shot in the arm for the ailing American auto industry.

Imagine what would happen if people started switching to solar or electric-powered cars? It would mean a drive for new vehicles and new technicians.

Detroit plants would be humming as workers produced a new fleet of clean cars. Americans go back to work, stocks goes up, the climate improves and we stop fighting oil wars. What's the down side?

Crumbling Middle Class is Spawning Domestic Terrorism

Bush's $2.4 Trillion War Bill Wrecked The Economy

Sometimes I wish I was not always right. About two years ago when the American people finally came to the realization that George W. Bush had really screwed up the economy, I told a close friend that we would probably see an uptick in violence.

I suggested that white people, stripped of their homes, SUVs and Eddie Bauer clothing, would lash out violently. Unlike black and Latino, and maybe even Asian people, many white people are not used to being broke. Being broke is nothing new to people of color, most of us are only one generation from the projects. Many of us grew up in the ghetto, went to college and got out. We still have family members who live in shady neighborhoods. And who has hasn't had to send money to kinfolk who have fallen on hard times?

But with white people it is not necessarily the same. I am not saying that all white people are rich. But poverty is less common among whites. Although this is changing as the American nuclear family crumbles. Rising divorce rates and out of wedlock birth rates mean we are seeing more white families struggling with poverty as women try to raise children on single incomes. Statistically there are more white people on welfare than black people.

However for many white people, we are talking about two or three generations of middle-class incomes. Maybe some of their grandparents remember the Great Depression, but their parents went to college, or had white-collar jobs. There are kids who get brand new cars on their 18th birthdays, trust funds and college tuition paid for. I once worked with a lady who was surprised that most people went into debt to pay for college.

The Great Recession has decimated the middle class. In fact we are seeing many people tumbling out of the middle class and into poverty. When homes are foreclosed those families may end up homeless or in shelters. Unlike people of color, white people often don't have close social networks. Black people always know they can bunk on their mama's couch, until they get on their feet. But many middle class white people, are estranged from their families and find it difficult or darn near impossible to ask for help.

So it's not surprising we are seeing more case like Joe Stack, who crashed a plane into the IRS building in Austin, Tx. This is one of many recent cases of domestic terrorism from angry white men. And with FOX News, the Tea Party movement and people calling for the execution of the the first black president, I fear it's only going to get worse.

The worse thing about the Tea Baggers movement is that it misdirected anger. Tea Party protesters say they are mad at legislation like the banking bailout, because it overlooks the little guy, and yet they are throwing their weight behind the party which has an even more corporate-friendly agenda than the Democrats.

Unfortunately, the powers that be have always used race and religion to misdirect the anger of blue-collar white people. Tea Baggers are mad at Barack Obama, but they really should be directing their anger at George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, whose disastrous policies wrecked the economy. Bush signed the banking bailout and was an advocate of the same kind of deregulation that caused the financial crisis in the first place. (Obama took money from Wall Street so he really isn't that much better.) Consider this small fact, the Congressional Budget Office estimates the final cost of the Iraq War will be about $2.4 trillion! (Where were the Tea Baggers was Bush was pushing his bill through Congress?), while the Stimulus bill, cost about $780 billion. So if we had not invaded Iraq we could have sunk that money into the American economy and prevented the Great Recession from ever happening! By the way, Paul Krugman, New York Times columnist, Princeton professor, and Noble prize winner, also agrees with this idea.

poll by twiigs.com

Is the Shock Doctrine Being Used on American Workers?

If you are one of the millions of Americans currently unemployed, you are facing one of the worst job markets in more than 50 years.

Randi Rhodes, a liberal talk show host, has said that the economy was deliberately crashed as a way to drive down the wages of American workers. That might sound like a conspiracy theory, but that's currently happening.

Since there are so many unemployed people, workers are willing to take huge pay cuts. So the person who used to demand $50,000 is now willing to work for $30,000. In many cases employers are laying off mid-level workers and replacing them with fresh college grads, who will work for almost half the pay. In many career fields, wages has been devalued.

Left-wing journalist Naomi Klein describes this practise as the "shock doctrine." She writes about this in her book, "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism." She came up with this theory after reporting on the Iraq war and witnessing how many corporations profited from the chaos left after the war. Klein also writes that since the Iraqi population was still reeling from a lightening-fast war, they were too cowed to protest.

Klein says that interrogators in Iraq also used the same procedure on prisoners. Keep them in state of shock and disorientation so they are more likely to be compliant. The same thing has happened to American workers. We have been pummelled by the near crash of the stock market, terrorism, the crash of the mortgage industry and the housing market, and the failure of several auto companies.

This economic chaos has left the American worker scared, dazed and confused -- essentially in a state of shock. So now desperate workers are willing to work for half the pay and no benefits, or work for nothing at all. And who profits? The corporations because they are getting the same work for half the pay, which means more profits for them.

poll by twiigs.com

Iraq Veteran Seeks Sanctuary in Canada

With attention now turned to Afghanistan, most Americans have largely forgotten about the effects of the Iraq war. But with the war in Afghanistan expanding and talk of more operations in Yemen, it is inevitable that the military will be under strain .

Here is a fascinating story about Rodney Watson, a kid who joined the military because he wanted to be a cook. He found himself in Iraq, and was given a rifle and told to go on bomb disposal duty. He also witnessed American troops abusing Iraqis and witnessed racism towards black soldiers.

After Watson's contract was up in 2007, he thought he was done with the military but was told that he had overlooked the fine print, and was going to be stop-lossed -- essentially told that he could not leave. Watson left for Canada and has sought sanctuary as a political refugee. Although he was denied refugee status by the Canadian government, he is being supported by the First United Methodist of downtown Vancouver. Watson has been declared a deserter by the U.S. military.

http://www.truthout.org/1230095

poll by twiigs.com

Liberman calls for War in Yemen

Members of the Saudi royal family visit Saudi troops who are

helping to fight rebels in Yemen

Yeah, I had to look at this story twice. Former Democrat, turned RINO, turned Indepdendent Joe Lieberman is calling for the over-streteched U.S. military to open up another war front in Yemen.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian terrorist who tried to blow up a KLM plane in Detroit on Christmas Day, was apparently armed in Yemen. The Yemeni government is currently fighting a long-standing war against terrorists and seperatists, with assistance from American special forces teams who are alleged to be on the ground in Yemen training local troops and calling in air strikes. This is the way the war should have been handled in Afghanistan!

Where does Lieberman think we are going to get the troops from? We are already fighting two unfinished wars, and our troops are currently on their fourth rotations. (In World War II most troops only saw about two tours of duty.) America is also relying on hired guns, like Blackwater, to fight its wars. There are currently more contractors in Afghanistan than uniformed military. The mercs are largely unregulated and often cost much more than regular troops.

If the war is this serious, the obvious answer would be to reintroduce the draft. But that would be political suicide. At least it might get apolitical college students off their asses ...

http://www.examiner.com/x-15870-Populist-Examiner~y2009m12d28-Joe-Lieberman-Yemen-is-tomorrows-war-we-need-to-be-preemptive

poll by twiigs.com

CIA Used Phony Software to Detect Terrorist Messages

Former CIA Director George Tenet

It's only now that we are learning how messed up the Bush administration's War on Terror was. First it was the failure to capture Osama Bin Laden at Tora Bora, and then it was the erronous invasion of Iraq, in search of non-existence Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Well, here another doozy. A Playboy story reports that sometime around 2003, the CIA started using software developed by Dennis Montgomery of eTreppid, which claimed it could decode terrorists messages hidden in Al-Jazerra television broadcasts. Yes, really.

The software was later discredited by French intelligence, but not before Homeland Security had issued several warnings. If the CIA had investigated Montgomery, they would have learn that he only had two years of college training, no science background and was a veteran conman with a gambling problem. His own lawyer described him as "habitual liar." With these guys protecting us, it's no wonder that the 9-11 attacks happened.

http://www.playboy.com/articles/the-man-who-conned-the-pentagon-dennis-montgomery/index.html?page=1

poll by twiigs.com

Liberal Commentator Blames Ft. Hood Shooting on Bush

Thom Hartman, a liberal commentator, puts the blame for the Ft. Hood shooting squarely on former president George W. Bush's shoulders. In this article posted on Alternet.org, he successfully argues that the Bush administration turned the war on terror into a battle between good and evil, and Osama Bin Laden, into a comic book supervillain.

Hartmann argues that just like in comic books, a great hero needs a great villain. Bush cast himself as Superman and Bin Laden was his Lex Luthor. Hartmann says that Bill Clinton had the right idea, by dealing with Al-Quaeda as a small band of criminals and targeting them with police agencies, special forces teams and cruise missiles.

Hartmann argues that Bush's large-scale wars only boosted Al-Quaeda's image in the eyes of the Muslim world and stretched the American military to it's breaking point.

poll by twiigs.com