Political leanings

[El_hefe]

Very Lewis Carroll by way of Mark Twain meets Norm Crosby...... nice.

[Torurot]

New Rule: Americans Must Realize What Makes NFL Football So Great: Socialism
January 28,

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-ma....73.html

New Rule: With the Super Bowl only a week away, Americans must realize what makes NFL football so great: socialism. That's right, for all the F-15 flyovers and flag waving, football is our most successful sport because the NFL takes money from the rich teams and gives it to the poor teams... just like President Obama wants to do with his secret army of ACORN volunteers. Green Bay, Wisconsin has a population of 100,000. Yet this sleepy little town on the banks of the Fuck-if-I-know River has just as much of a chance of making it to the Super Bowl as the New York Jets - who next year need to just shut the hell up and play.

Now, me personally, I haven't watched a Super Bowl since 2004, when Janet Jackson's nipple popped out during half time, and that split-second glimpse of an unrestrained black titty burned my eyes and offended me as a Christian. But I get it - who doesn't love the spectacle of juiced-up millionaires giving each other brain damage on a giant flat-screen TV with a picture so realistic it feels like Ben Roethlisberger is in your living room, grabbing your sister?

It's no surprise that some 100 million Americans will watch the Super Bowl next week - that's 40 million more than go to church on Christmas - suck on that, Jesus! It's also 85 million more than watched the last game of the World Series, and in that is an economic lesson for America. Because football is built on an economic model of fairness and opportunity, and baseball is built on a model where the rich almost always win and the poor usually have no chance. The World Series is like Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. You have to be a rich bitch just to play. The Super Bowl is like Tila Tequila. Anyone can get in.

Or to put it another way, football is more like the Democratic philosophy. Democrats don't want to eliminate capitalism or competition, but they'd like it if some kids didn't have to go to a crummy school in a rotten neighborhood while others get to go to a great school and their Dad gets them into Harvard. Because when that happens "achieving the American dream" is easy for some, and just a fantasy for others.

That's why the NFL runs itself in a way that would fit nicely on Glenn Beck's chalkboard - they literally share the wealth, through salary caps and revenue sharing - TV is their biggest source of revenue, and they put all of it in a big commie pot and split it 32 ways. Because they don't want anyone to fall too far behind. That's why the team that wins the Super Bowl picks last in the next draft. Or what the Republicans would call "punishing success."

Baseball, on the other hand, is exactly like the Republicans, and I don't just mean it's incredibly boring. I mean their economic theory is every man for himself. The small market Pittsburgh Steelers go to the Super Bowl more than anybody - but the Pittsburgh Pirates? Levi Johnston has sperm that will not grow up and live long enough to see the Pirates in a World Series. Their payroll is about $40 million, and the Yankees is $206 million. They have about as much chance at getting in the playoffs as a poor black teenager from Newark has of becoming the CEO of Halliburton. That's why people stop going to Pirate games in May, because if you're not in the game, you become indifferent to the fate of the game, and maybe even get bitter - that's what's happening to the middle class in America. It's also how Marie Antoinette lost her head.

So, you kind of have to laugh - the same angry white males who hate Obama because he's "redistributing wealth" just love football, a sport that succeeds economically because it does exactly that. To them, the NFL is as American as hot dogs, Chevrolet, apple pie, and a second, giant helping of apple pie. But then again, they think they're macho because their sport is football, when honestly - is there anything gayer than wearing another man's shirt?

Follow Bill Maher on Twitter: www.twitter.com/billmaher

[pacman]

I like Bill Maher, his comments about America are always delivered with great irony.

And his anology here of comparing Obama's policies to the differences between the NFL & baseball are well done.

Another political post I would never find myself but have enjoyed reading. Some of us like this stuff...      

[Torurot]

I see the LB commentariat has very little to say about the 'West' starting YET another war!!

A couple to start you off

Libya's Opposition Leadership Comes into Focus
http://www.stratfor.com/analysi....s-focus
March 20, 2011 | 2222 GMT

Summary

Libya has descended to a situation tantamount to civil war, with forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in the west pitted against rebels from the east. One of the biggest problems faced by Western governments has been identifying exactly who the rebels are. Many of them, including former Libyan Justice Minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil and former Interior Minister Gen. Abdel Fattah Younis, defected early on from the Gadhafi regime and represent part of the leadership of the National Transitional Council, which lobbied Western governments for support soon after its formation. Challenges posed by geography and lack of military capabilities remain, however, meaning that even with the aid of foreign airstrikes against Gadhafi€™s forces, the rebel council will struggle to achieve its stated goal of militarily toppling Gadhafi and unifying the country under its leadership.

Editor€™s note:This analysis was originally published March 8 but has been significantly updated with current, accurate information.
Analysis
Identifying the Opposition

One of the biggest problems Western governments have faced throughout the Libyan crisis has been identifying who exactly the €œeastern rebels€ are. Until the uprising began in February, there was thought to be no legitimate opposition to speak of in the country, and thus no contacts between the United States, the United Kingdom, France or others. Many of those who now speak for the rebel movement are headquartered in Benghazi. There have been several defections, however, from the regime of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi to the eastern rebel leadership, and it is men like these with whom the West is now trying to engage as the possible next generation of leadership in Libya, should its unstated goal of regime change come to fruition.

The structure through which the Libyan opposition is represented is the National Transitional Council. The first man to announce its creation was former Libyan Justice Minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, who defected from the government Feb. 21 and declared the establishment of a €œtransitional government€ Feb. 26. At the time, Abdel-Jalil claimed that it would give way to national elections within three months, though this was clearly never a realistic goal.

One day after Abdel-Jalil€™s announcement, a Benghazi-based lawyer named Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga held a news conference to refute his claims. Ghoga pronounced himself to be the spokesman of the new council and denied that it resembled a transitional government, adding that even if it did, Abdel-Jalil would not be in charge. Ghoga derided the former justice minister as being more influential in the eastern Libyan city of Al Bayda than in Benghazi, which is the heart of the rebel movement.

The personality clash between Abdel-Jalil and Ghoga continued on for most of the next week, as each man portended to be running a council that spoke for the eastern rebel movement in its entirety. It was significant only insofar as it provided just a glimpse of the sort of internal rivalries that exist in eastern Libya, known historically as Cyrenaica. Though Cyrenaica has a distinct identity from the western Libyan region historically referred to as Tripolitania, that does not mean that it is completely unified. This will be a problem moving ahead for the coalition carrying out the bombing campaign of Libya, as tribal and personal rivalries in the east will compound with a simple lack of familiarity with who the rebels really are.

The National Transitional Council officially came into being March 6, and €” for the moment, at least €” has settled the personal and regional rivalry between Abdel-Jalil and Ghoga, with the former named the council€™s head and the latter its spokesman. Despite the drama that preceded the formal establishment of the council, all members of the opposition have always been unified on a series of goals: They want to mount an armed offensive against the government-controlled areas in the west; they want to overthrow Gadhafi; they seek to unify the country with Tripoli as its capital; and they do not want foreign boots on Libyan soil. The unity of the rebels, in short, is based upon a common desire to oust the longtime Libyan leader.

The transitional council asserts that it derives its legitimacy from the series of city councils that have been running the affairs of the east since the February uprising that turned all of eastern Libya into rebel-held territory. This council is, in essence, a conglomeration of localized units of makeshift self-governance. And while it may be centered in the east, the rebel council has also gone out of its way to assert that all Libyans who are opposed to Gadhafi€™s rule are a part of the movement. This is not a secessionist struggle. A military stalemate with Gadhafi that would lead to the establishment of two Libyas would not represent an outright success for the rebels, even though it would be preferential to outright defeat. Though it has only released the names of nine of its reported 31 members for security reasons, the National Transitional Council has claimed that it has members in several cities that lie beyond the rebel-held territory in the east (including Misurata, Zentan, Zawiya, Zouara, Nalut, Jabal Gharbi, Ghat and Kufra), it has promised membership to all Libyans who want to join, and it asserted that the council is the sole representative of the whole of Libya.

The council€™s foremost priorities for the past several weeks have been garnering foreign support for airstrikes on Gadhafi€™s forces and the establishment of a no-fly zone. Absent that, the rebels have long argued, none of their other military objectives stood a chance of being realized.

It was the lobbying for Western support in the establishment of a no-fly zone that led the transitional council€™s €œexecutive team,€ also known as the crisis committee, to go on a tour of European capitals in mid-March designed to shore up support from various governments and international institutions. Mahmoud Jebril, an ally of Abdel-Jalil, and de facto Foreign Minister Ali al-Essawi, the former Libyan ambassador to India who quit in February when the uprising began, comprise the executive team. The result of this trip was the first recognition of the transitional council as the legitimate representative of the Libyan people, which was provided by France on March 10. France, as we were to see in the following days, was to become the most vociferous advocate of the international community coming to the aid of the rebel council through the use of airstrikes.
Challenges

Before the decision was made to implement a no-fly zone, the Libyan opposition forces collapsed in the face of Gadhafi€™s onslaught, and they have shown little sign of coalescing into a meaningful military force. While the loyalist eastward thrust was against a disorganized rebel force, Gadhafi€™s forces have demonstrated that they retain considerable strength and loyalty to the regime. That means that even with coalition airstrikes taking out armor and artillery, there will still be forces loyal to Gadhafi inside any urban center the rebels might encounter in a westward advance, meaning that the rebels would be forced to fight a dedicated force dug into built up areas while operating on extended lines, a difficult tactical and operational challenge for even a coherent and proficient military force. So even though the coalition airstrikes have since shifted the military balance, the fundamental challenges for the rebels to organize and orchestrate a coherent military offensive remain unchanged.

It is important to note that little of the territory that fell into rebel control in the early days of the insurrection was actually occupied through conquest. Many military and security forces in the east either deserted or defected to the opposition, which brought not only men and arms, but also the territory those troops ostensibly controlled. Most fighting that occurred once the situation transitioned into what is effectively a civil war, particularly in the main population centers along the coastal stretch between Benghazi and Sirte, consisted of relatively small, lightly armed formations conducting raids, rather than either side decisively defeating a major formation and pacifying a town.

Just as the executive team represents the National Transitional Council€™s foreign affairs unit, the council also has a military division. This was originally headed by Omar El-Hariri, but the overall command of the Libyan rebels has since reportedly been passed to former Interior Minister Gen. Abdel Fattah Younis. Younis€™ name arose early on as the man with whom the British government was engaging as it tried to get a grip on the situation unfolding in rebel-held territory. He was not included in the original transitional council membership, however, despite several indications that he did in fact retain widespread support among eastern rebels. This, like the clash between Abdel-Jalil and Ghoga, was another indication of the rivalries that exist in eastern Libya, which paint a picture of disunity among the rebels.

Younis, however, now appears to have been officially incorporated into the command structure and is presiding over a National Transitional Council €œarmy€ that, like the council itself, is the sum of its parts. Every population center in eastern Libya has since the uprising began created respective militias, all of which are now, theoretically, to report to Benghazi. Indeed, the most notable of these local militias, created Feb. 28, has been known at times as the Benghazi Military Council, which is linked to the Benghazi city council, the members of which form much of the political core of the new national council. There are other known militias in eastern Libya, however, operating training camps in places like Ajdabiya, Al Bayda and Tobruk, and undoubtedly several other locations as well.

Younis has perhaps the most challenging job of all in eastern Libya: organizing a coherent fighting force that can mount an invasion of the west €” something that will be difficult even after an extensive foreign bombing campaign. More defections by the military and security forces in the west, like the earlier defections in Zawiya and Misurata, would perhaps benefit the transitional council even more than the bombing campaign under way. There is no sign of imminent defections from the west, however, which will only reinforce the military and geographic challenges with which the rebel council is faced.

Libyan society is by definition tribal and therefore prone to fractiousness. The Gadhafi era has done nothing to counter this historical legacy, as the Jamahiriya political system promoted local governance more than a truly national system of administration. Ironically, it was this legacy of Gadhafi€™s regime that helped the individual eastern cities to rapidly establish local committees that took over administration of their respective areas, but it will create difficulties should they try to truly come together. Rhetoric is far different from tangible displays of unity.

Geography will also continue to be a challenge for the National Transitional Council. The Libyan opposition still does not have the basic military proficiencies or know-how to project and sustain an armored assault on Tripoli; if it tried, it would run a serious risk of being neutralized on arrival by prepared defenses. Even Gadhafi€™s hometown of Sirte €” almost certainly a necessary intermediate position to control on any drive to Tripoli €” looks to be a logistical stretch for the opposition. An inflow of weapons may help but would not be the complete solution. Just as the primary factor in eastern Libya€™s breaking free of the government€™s control lies in a series of military defections, the occurrence of the same scenario in significant numbers in the west is what would give the National Transitional Council its best chance of overthrowing Gadhafi.

and if that's not enough....

Libya's Opposition Leadership Comes into Focus
http://www.stratfor.com/analysi....s-focus
March 20, 2011 | 2222 GMT

Summary

Libya has descended to a situation tantamount to civil war, with forces loyal to Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi in the west pitted against rebels from the east. One of the biggest problems faced by Western governments has been identifying exactly who the rebels are. Many of them, including former Libyan Justice Minister Mustafa Abdel-Jalil and former Interior Minister Gen. Abdel Fattah Younis, defected early on from the Gadhafi regime and represent part of the leadership of the National Transitional Council, which lobbied Western governments for support soon after its formation. Challenges posed by geography and lack of military capabilities remain, however, meaning that even with the aid of foreign airstrikes against Gadhafi€™s forces, the rebel council will struggle to achieve its stated goal of militarily toppling Gadhafi and unifying the country under its leadership.

Editor€™s note:This analysis was originally published March 8 but has been significantly updated with current, accurate information....

rest at the link

[alan1chef]

The West did not start this conflict....the coalition planes are there for humanitarian reasons...right?

President Reticent
March 22, 2011 10:26 A.M.
By Stanley Kurtz

Obama doesn€™t tell you what he€™s thinking. He keeps his motives to himself. Cherished long-term ideological goals are advanced as pragmatic fixes to concrete problems in the present. Now we€™re seeing the familiar domestic pattern in foreign policy as well.

Few Americans realize that Obama has had a longstanding interest in multilateral efforts to combat war crimes and genocide. Obama would like to see a more constraining international legal regime on war crimes, even at the cost of national sovereignty, not to mention the blood and treasure of the countries doing the enforcing. In general, Obama has said little about his larger foreign policy goals. To the extent that he has done so, Obama seems more the €œrealist€ than an advocate of humanitarian intervention.

Yet for years, Samantha Power, a prominent advocate of humanitarian intervention and a key backer of our action in Libya, has been a powerful member of Obama€™s foreign policy team. In 2005, Obama contacted Power after reading her book on genocide. There followed a long conversation, after which Power left Harvard to work for Obama, quic€˜kly emerging as his senior foreign policy advisor.

It seems reasonable to conclude from his long-term relationship with Power that Obama shares her interest in making humanitarian military interventions more common. Yet the president has said little about this, and the obvious policy implications of his ties with Power are rarely drawn. In his biography of Obama, David Remnick describes the beginnings of the Power-Obama relationship thus: €œObama did not strike Power as a liberal interventionist or a Kissingerian realist or any other kind of ideological €˜ist€™ except maybe a €˜consquentialist.€™ In foreign policy, Obama said, he was for what worked.€

Here we have the classic protective presentation of Obama. The future president reads a book by a passionately ideological humanitarian interventionist and quickly hires her as his key foreign policy advisor. Yet the obvious ideological implications of this are left entirely unexplored. Instead we are quickly reassured that Obama is nothing but a pragmatist.

There is a germ of truth to the pragmatism claim. Obama doesn€™t seem to have a single overarching strategic perspective. Instead he €œpragmatically€ juggles competing sensibilities on foreign policy, ranging from multiculturalist non-interventionism, to postcolonial exhortation, to humanitarian interventionism, to a political desire to keep foreign-policy problems sufficiently in check to allow a focus on domestic transformation. But if Obama shifts €œpragmatically€ between competing foreign-policy orientations, the stances themselves are intensely ideological, and almost entirely unavowed.

Most of the commentary on Libya has focused on the tension between Obama€™s apparent desire to displaceQaddafi and his reluctance to admit to it. But the chief reason for this intervention is the one that€™s staring us in the face. Obama dithered when it was simply a matter of replacing Qaddafi, yet quickly acted when slaughter in Benghazi became the issue. What Samantha Power and her supporters want is to solidify the principle of €œresponsibility to protect€ in international law. That requires a €œpure€ case of intervention on humanitarian grounds. Power€™s agenda would explain why Obama acted when he acted, and why the public rationale for action has not included regime change.

Yet Obama has so far been reluctant to fully explain any of this to either Congress or the American public, perhaps because he realizes that the ideological basis of his actions would not be popular if openly admitted. If Obama were a different sort of president, we would have all heard about €œresponsibility to protect€ long ago. The country would have thoroughly debated Power€™s ideas, and the public would have quickly recognized the core motives of the president€™s actions in Libya.

Instead, the president€™s long-term goals have remained murky. He€™s been impossibly vague on regime change, narrowly focused on the danger to Benghazi, and has said relatively little about the aspirations of Power and her associates to enshrine the principles and precedents of humanitarian intervention in international law.

As with health care, Obama€™s talk isn€™t working because he cannot afford to specify broader ideological motivations he knows the public won€™t buy.

[alan1chef]

The President has been very clear about his objectives in Libya.....

Two Discordant Quotes
March 22, 2011 12:22 A.M.
By Matthew Shaffer

From a Politico rundown of Obama administration statements on Libya today:

[1.] President Barack Obama insisted Monday that the U.S. military€™s mission in Libya is not confused, even though the aerial attacks unleashed against Col. Muammar Qadhafi€™s regime two days ago aren€™t intended to force him out of power€¦

[2.] €œI also have stated that it is U.S. policy that Qadhafi needs to go,€ Obama said, noting that a United Nations resolution last week authorizing force against Libya is based on humanitarian concerns, not regime change. €œWhen it comes to our military action€¦we are going to make sure that we stick to that mandate.€

So, (1) it€™s U.S. policy that Qaddafi must go. And (2) U.S. military action in Libya is indifferent to that end. And (3) this is not confused.

[strocube]

Imperial over-reach.

[Torurot]

Great posts Alan. Clearly this is going to end badly as have all other interventions. My money is on CHINA getting ALL the oil contracts from Libya. War mongers Britain, France, U.S.A. will get NONE. Such are the spoils of terminal stupidity at the national level.

The Stench of Death
Libya and the Hypocrisy of Humanitarian Intervention
http://counterpunch.org/walsh03212011.html
By JOHN V. WALSH March 21, 2011

The stench of death hanging over protest centers in the Arab world is more than matched by the rank hypocrisy befouling Washington and the lesser capitals of Western Empire. There is, however, not the slightest allusion to €œhypocrisy,€ in the imperial media. The €œH€ word is not to be used with respect to Obama or the other lords of Empire, even though it is as obvious as the proverbial nose on one€™s face; the censorship in the mass media is holding.

Consider it. The Western powers have now launched a full-scale military assault on Muamara Qaddafi€™s Libya, never a reliable €œpartner€ of the West. First there were denunciations and demonization of Qaddafi following the Libyan uprising in the East, then sanctions, then the attack. Ostensibly, the attack is to €œprotect€ the Libyan people from the hand of Qaddafi. But is such a rationale even remotely credible?

Look at other events happening on the very same weekend the attacks began. In Bahrain Shia protesters by the score are being gunned down by the Sunni police of the Al Khalifa €œroyal family,€ sometimes killing the protesters like animals with hunting rifles. They are joined by the tanks of the Saudi €œroyals,€ the same Saudi Arabia whence came the majority of the perpetrators of 9/11. There are no American cruise missiles aimed at the Saudi tanks and no threats from the Western powers to stop the carnage of the thugs ruling Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. What comes from the U.S.? No denunciation, no demonization, no sanctions, no attack.

In Saudi Arabia itself Al-Jazeera tells us: €œThe ban on public demonstrations (throughout the country) comes amid media reports of a huge mobilization of Saudi troops in Shia-dominated provinces in order to quell any possible uprising€¦. 10,000 security personnel are being sent to the region by road, clogging highways into Dammam and other cities.€

And in Riyadh: €œSeveral protesters were arrested in Saudi Arabia on Sunday at a demonstration demanding the release of thousands of prisoners, held captive for years without trial. They were among dozens of men and women who tried to push their way into Riyadh's interior ministry building, which was fortified with up to 2,000 special forces and 200 police vehicles, according to the Associated Press news agency. €˜We have seen at least three or four police vehicles taking people away," said an activist there who declined to be named. €˜Security forces have arrested around 15 people. They tried to go into the ministry to go and ask for the freedom of their loved ones.€™€ But the US sponsors no UN resolutions about the €œRight to Protect€ in Saudi Arabia. No denunciation, no demonization, no sanctions, no attack.

Then there is Yemen, another U.S. ally, where today the Ali Abdullah Saleh, the country's €œpresident€ for 32 years, is massacring his people by the score. In response there is nothing more than a muffled call for €œmaximal restraint€ by Obama and company. No denunciation, no demonization, no sanctions, no attack.

Or regard the spectacle of Gaza where Apartheid Israel is again launching a bombing campaign on a besieged and helpless population. Not a peep of protest from the U.S. No denunciation, no demonization, no sanctions, no attack.

All that is just this weekend. But behold the events of recent weeks Let us not forget Egypt where hundreds or thousands of unarmed protesters were slaughtered while the U.S. in the person of Joe Biden and others cautioned that €œpresident€ for 41 years and U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak, was not a dictator. Hillary Clinton defended him as a personal friend of hers and her family. This is the same Mubarak, whose police tormented the entire Egyptian population to the point that virtually everyone knew someone beaten or tortured. This is the same Mubarak, whose prisons always had room to torture CIA victims transported there from around the world, an endless cargo of €œextraordinary renditions. Mubarak killed and killed with guns, goons and helicopters before he fell. And from the U.S.? No denunciation, no demonization, no sanctions, no attack.

The failure of the Egyptian army to join in the slaughter, apparently for fear of being on the losing side, was the sole reason the slaughter ended. And now the same army, consulting interminably with the US, is working a counter-revolution in that hapless country. Whether it will prevail against the people is anyone€™s guess, but there is no doubt that the US is working overtime to turn back the clock and shackle Egypt to a new model of the old imperial harness.

This is a small sample. Jordan, Iraq, Tunisia and other U.S. allies could be added to the list of those perpetrating endless atrocities against their people for many decades. And from the U.S.? No denunciation, no demonization, no sanctions, no attack.

I conclude with the caveat that I am not holding up Qadaffi as a model. What goes on in Libya I cannot tell at a distance. But as Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com, drawing on the testimony of Dartmouth professor Diedreick Vandewalle, an expert on Libya, has noted, the rebellion in Libya seems to be one of the east versus west of the country, a return to old tribal boundaries. That is quite different from Egypt where the demand is for development and democracy. Is there anything unique about Libya other than its disloyalty to the West? I can think of only one other thing which distinguishes it from Egypt or various other African dictatorships. Libya has a Human Development Index which is the highest in all of Africa. In fact it puts Libya in the same league as the developed nations of Europe. Certainly man does not live by bread alone although a bit helps. But it would seem that Libyans need less protection than the many U.S. Arab allies, which not only brutally oppress their people but also impoverish them.

John V. Walsh can be reached at [email protected]

[alan1chef]

The latest news....the coalition is bombing Qaddafi's home town...

Mark Steyn
The National Review
March 26, 2011 4:00 A.M.

The Art of Inconclusive War
Why is it that the United States no longer wins wars?

It is tempting and certainly very easy to point out that Obama€™s war (or Obama€™s €œkinetic military action,€ or €œtime-limited, scope-limited military action,€ or whatever the latest ever more preposterous evasion is) is at odds with everything candidate Obama said about U.S. military action before his election. And certainly every attempt the president makes to explain his Libyan adventure is either cringe-makingly stupid (€œI€™m accustomed to this contradiction of being both a commander-in-chief but also somebody who aspires to peace€) or alarmingly revealing of a very peculiar worldview:

€œThat€™s why building this international coalition has been so important,€ he said the other day. €œIt is our military that is being volunteered by others to carry out missions that are important not only to us, but are important internationally.€

That€™s great news. Who doesn€™t enjoy volunteering other people? The Arab League, for reasons best known to itself, decided that Colonel Qaddafi had outlived his sell-by date. Granted that the region€™s squalid polities haven€™t had a decent military commander since King Hussein fired Gen. Sir John Glubb half a century back, how difficult could it be even for Arab armies to knock off a psychotic transvestite guarded by Austin Powers fembots? But no: Instead, the Arab League decided to volunteer the U.S. military.

Likewise, the French and the British. Libya€™s special forces are trained by Britain€™s SAS. Four years ago, President Sarkozy hosted a state visit for Colonel Qaddafi, his personal security detail of 30 virgins, his favorite camel, and a 400-strong entourage that helped pitch his tent in the heart of Paris. Given that London and Paris have the third €“ and fourth-biggest military budgets on the planet and that between them they know everything about Qaddafi€™s elite troops, sleeping arrangements, guard-babes, and dromedaries, why couldn€™t they take him out? But no: They too decided to volunteer the U.S. military.

But, as I said, it€™s easy to mock the smartest, most articulate man ever to occupy the Oval Office. Instead, in a non-partisan spirit, let us consider why it is that the United States no longer wins wars. Okay, it doesn€™t exactly lose (most of) them, but nor does it have much to show for a now 60-year-old pattern of inconclusive outcomes. American forces have been fighting and dying in Afghanistan for a decade: Doesn€™t that seem like a long time for a non-colonial power to be spending hacking its way through the worthless terrain of a Third World dump? If the object is to kill terrorists, might there not be some slicker way of doing it? And, if the object is something else entirely, mightn€™t it be nice to know what it is?

I use the word €œnon-colonial€ intentionally. I am by temperament and upbringing an old-school imperialist: There are arguments to be made for being on the other side of the world for decades on end if you€™re claiming it as sovereign territory and rebuilding it in your image, as the British did in India, Belize, Mauritius, the Solomon Islands, you name it. Likewise, there are arguments to be made for saying sorry, we€™re a constitutional republic, we don€™t do empire. But there€™s not a lot to be said for forswearing imperialism and even modest cultural assertiveness, and still spending ten years getting shot up in Afghanistan helping to create, bankroll, and protect a so-called justice system that puts a man on death row for converting to Christianity.

Libya, in that sense, is a classic post-nationalist, post-modern military intervention: As in Kosovo, we€™re do-gooders in a land with no good guys. But, unlike Kosovo, not only is there no strategic national interest in what we€™re doing, the intended result is likely to be explicitly at odds with U.S. interests. A quarter-century back, Qaddafi was blowing American airliners out of the sky and murdering British policewomen: That was the time to drop a bomb on him. But we didn€™t. Everyone from the government of Scotland (releasing the €œterminally ill€ Lockerbie bomber, now miraculously restored to health) to Mariah Carey and Beyoncé (with their million-dollar-a-gig Qaddafi party nights) did deals with the Colonel.

Now suddenly he€™s got to go €” in favor of €œfreedom-loving€ €œdemocrats€ from Benghazi. That would be in eastern Libya €” which, according to West Point€™s Counter Terrorism Center, has sent per capita the highest number of foreign jihadists to Iraq. Perhaps now that so many Libyan jihadists are in Iraq, the Libyans left in Libya are all Swedes in waiting. But perhaps not. If we lack, as we do in Afghanistan, the cultural confidence to wean those we liberate from their less attractive pathologies, we might at least think twice before actively facilitating them.

Officially, only the French are committed to regime change. So suppose Qaddafi survives. If you were in his shoes, mightn€™t you be a little peeved? Enough to pull off a new Lockerbie? A more successful assassination attempt on the Saudi king? A little bit of Euro-bombing?

Alternatively, suppose Qaddafi winds up hanging from a lamppost in his favorite party dress. If you€™re a Third World dictator, what lessons would you draw? Qaddafi was the thug who came in from the cold, the one who (in the wake of Saddam€™s fall) renounced his nuclear program and was supposedly rehabilitated in the chancelleries of the West. He was €œa strong partner in the war on terrorism,€ according to U.S. diplomats. And what did Washington do? They overthrew him anyway.

[f0xxee]

(Torurot @ Mar. 23 2011,15:03)  War mongers Britain, France, U.S.A.

Warmongers FRANCE??

Aren't they the "cheese eating surrender-monkeys" according to the US POV?

Can't have it both ways old chap.....

[Torurot]

Who cares about the US view. More often wrong on these issues than right. Still now they have broken the egg, 300million per day to pay for. Alan and all US taxpayers will be delighted... The 'rebels' are Terrorists, AlQueda terrorists according to the CIA and the state dept, and only today we a see a report that they have stinger missiles amongst other cute toys..... taken from the armoury. Sounds like another "own goal' to me..

Here's a French view.....

Reasons and False Pretexts
Why are They Making War on Libya?
http://counterpunch.org/johnstone03242011.html
By DIANA JOHNSTONE March 24, 2011

Reason Number One: Regime change.

This was announced as the real objective the moment French president Nicolas Sarkozy took the extraordinary step of recognizing the rebels in Benghazi as "the only legitimate representative of the Libyan people". This recognition was an extraordinary violation of all diplomatic practice and principles. It meant non-recognition of the existing Libyan government and its institutions, which, contrary to the magical notions surrounding the word "dictator", cannot be reduced to the personality of one strongman. A major European nation, France, swept aside all those institutions to proclaim that an obscure group of rebels in a traditionally rebellious part of Libya constituted the North African nation€™s legitimate government.

Since factually this was clearly not true, it could only be the proclamation of an objective to be reached by war. The French announcement was equivalent to a declaration of war against Libya, a war to defeat Qaddafi and put the mysterious rebels in power in his place.

False Pretext Number One: "to protect civilians".

The falsity of this pretext is obvious, first of all, because the UN Resolution authorizing military action "to protect civilians" was drawn up by France €“ whose objective was clearly regime change €“ and its Western allies. Had the real concern of the UN Security Council been to "protect innocent lives", it would have, could have, should have sent a strong neutral observer mission to find out what was really happening in Libya. There was no proof of rebel claims that the Qaddafi regime was slaughtering civilians. Had there been visible proof of such atrocities, we can be sure that they would have been shown regularly on prime time television. We have seen no such proof. A UN fact-finding mission could have very rapidly set the record straight, and the Security Council could then have acted on the basis of factual information rather than of claims by rebels seeking international aid for their cause.

Instead, the Security Council, now little more than an instrument of Western powers, rushed ahead with sanctions, referral of alleged present or expected "crimes against humanity" to the International Criminal Court, and finally an authorization of a "no-fly zone" which Western powers were certain to interpret as a license to wage all-out war against Libya.

Once the United States and its leading NATO allies are authorized to "protect civilians", they do so with the instruments they have: air strikes; bombing and cruise missiles. Air strikes, bombing and cruise missiles are not designed to "protect civilians" but rather to destroy military targets, which inevitably leads to killing civilians. Aside from such "collateral damage", what right do we have to kill Libyan military personnel manning airports and other Libyan defense facilities? What have they done to us?

Reason Number Two: Because it€™s easy.

With NATO forces bogged down in Afghanistan, certain alliance leaders (but not all of them) could think it would be a neat idea to grab a quick and easy victory in a nice little "humanitarian war". This, they can hope, could revive enthusiasm for military operations and increase the flagging popularity of politicians able to strut around as champions of "democracy" and destroyers of "dictators". Libya looks like an easy target. There you have a huge country, mostly desert, with only about six million inhabitants. The country€™s defense installations are all located along the Mediterranean coast, within easy reach of NATO country fighter jets and US cruise missiles. Libyan armed forces are small, weak and untested. It looks like a pushover, not quite as easy as Grenada but no harder than Serbia. Sarkozy and company can hope to strut their victory strut in short order.

False Pretext Number Two: Arabs asked for this war.

On March 12, the Arab League meeting in Cairo announced that it backed a no-fly zone in Libya. This provided cover for the French-led semi-NATO operation. "We are responding to the demands of the Arab world", they could claim. But which Arab world? On the one hand, Sarkozy brazenly presented his crusade against Qaddafi as a continuation of the democratic uprisings in the Arab world against their autocratic leaders, while at the same time pretending to respond to the demand of€¦ the most autocratic of those leaders, namely the Gulf State princes, themselves busily suppressing their own democratic uprisings. (It is not known exactly how the Arab League reached that decision, but Syria and Algeria voiced strong objections.)

The Western public was expected not to realize that those Arab leaders have their own reasons for hating Qaddafi, which have nothing to do with the reasons for hating him voiced in the West. Qaddafi has openly told them off to their faces, pointing to their betrayal of Palestine, their treachery, their hypocrisy. Last year, incidentally, former British MP George Galloway recounted how, in contrast to the Egyptian government€™s obstruction of aid to Gaza, his aid caravan had had its humanitarian cargo doubled during a stopover in Libya. Qaddafi long ago turned his back on the Arab world, considering its leaders hopeless, and turned to Africa.

While the Arab League€™s self-serving stance against Qaddafi was hailed in the West, little attention was paid to the African Union€™s unanimous opposition to war against the Libyan leader. Qaddafi has invested huge amounts of oil revenues in sub-Saharan Africa, building infrastructure and investing in development. The Western powers that overthrow him will continue to buy Libyan oil as before. The major difference could be that the new rulers, put in place by Europe, will follow the example of the Arab League sheikhs and shift their oil revenues from Africa to the London stock exchange and Western arms merchants.

Real Reason Number Three: Because Sarkozy followed BHL€™s advice.

On March 4, the French literary dandy Bernard-Henri Lévy held a private meeting in Benghazi with Moustapha Abdeljalil, a former justice minister who has turned coats to become leader of the rebel "National Transition Council". That very evening, BHL called Sarkozy on his cellphone and got his agreement to receive the NTC leaders. The meeting took place on March 10 in the Elysée palace in Paris. As reported in Le Figaro by veteran international reporter Renaud Girard, Sarkozy thereupon announced to the delighted Libyans the plan that he had concocted with BHL: recognition of the NTC as sole legitimate representative of Libya, the naming of a French ambassador to Benghazi, precision strikes on Libyan military airports, with the blessings of the Arab League (which he had already obtained). The French foreign minister, Alain Juppé, was startled to learn of this dramatic turn in French diplomacy after the media.

Qaddafi explained at length after the uprising began that he could not be called upon to resign, because he held no official office. He was, he insisted, only a "guide", to whom the Libyan people could turn for advice on controversial questions.

It turns out the French also have an unofficial spiritual guide: Bernard-Henri Lévy. While Qaddafi wears colorful costumes and dwells in a tent, BHL wears impeccable white shirts open down his manly chest and hangs out in the Saint Germain des Près section of Paris. Neither was elected. Both exercise their power in mysterious ways.

In the Anglo-American world, Bernard-Henri Lévy is regarded as a comic figure, much like Qaddafi. His "philosophy" has about as many followers as the Little Green Book of the Libyan guide. But BHL also has money, lots of it, and is the friend of lots more. He exercises enormous influence in the world of French media, inviting journalists, writers, show business figures to his vacation paradise in Marrakech, serving on the board of directors of the two major "center-left" daily newspaper, Libération and Le Monde. He writes regularly in whatever mainstream publication he wants, appears on whatever television channel he chooses. By ordinary people in France, he is widely detested. But they cannot hope for a UN Security Council resolution to get rid of him.

Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions.She can be reached at [email protected]

[alan1chef]

The US should have told NATO to handle it themselves and we should have stayed out of it completely. Now, it is becoming "the United States and its leading NATO allies"...instead of NATO and it's allies. It is not our fight...we've got enough issues with the tribal mess in Afghanistan.

[Torurot]

Not so sure this is political but it has to go some where.

With the visit of Her Majesty Q.E. to Northern Ireland

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspap....41.html

England past its glory was still a land of hope

Tue, May 17, 2011

Hundreds of thousands of Irish emigrants benefited from Britain€™s
greatest achievement, writes FINTAN O'TOOLE

MY ENGLAND isn€™t Stanley Baldwin€™s €œtinkle of the hammer on the anvil
in the country smithy€, or George Orwell€™s €œclatter of clogs in the
Lancashire mill towns . . . old maids bicycling to Holy Communion
through the mists of the autumn morning€, or John Major€™s €œlong
shadows on the county grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs€.
It isn€™t imperial delusions or patronising public school voices. It
isn€™t the impregnable self-righteousness of a brilliantly self-serving
ruling class. And it isn€™t the Queen.

My England is the welfare state. My aunts and uncles didn€™t emigrate
to England. They emigrated to social democracy. The place they wanted
to be wasn€™t Hammersmith or Ealing, Birmingham or Manchester, though
they ended up in all those places and more. It was National Health
Service Land, Free Education Land, Unionised Workforce Land, where you
could get a living wage, Jobs for Women Land, where being female
didn€™t mean your only choices were whether to be a housewife or a nun.
It was a land of basic decency where ordinary working people believed
they had a right to a reasonably tolerable present and the hope for a
better future.

If, in the period between 1945 and 1979, you wanted to understand the
difference between ideology and human realities, the question to ask
was: what€™s the difference between England and Ireland? In the realm
of rhetoric and abstraction, the answer was to be found in endless
discourses about history, religion, victimhood and oppression, the
Empire and the Four Green Fields.

But for those who grew up on small farms or in the working class
ghettoes of Irish towns and cities, the answers were entirely
different. You could get a job in England. Your kids could go to
secondary school and, if they were smart, they had a good chance of
getting to university. You could get your eyes tested and your teeth
fixed. You could get some kind of a house. And in Ireland, you
couldn€™t.

And all of these things trumped nationality and religion. It wasn€™t
that the hundreds of thousands who left for England felt less Irish €“
in many ways, they were forced to feel more so, to be suddenly and
uncomfortably aware of the way they spoke and moved. Whether they
liked it or not, they were Paddies, forced to deal with everything
from outright racism to €œgood-natured€ joshing. (€œWhat€™s the matter,
Paddy, can€™t take a joke?€)

In relation to religion, it wasn€™t that they hadn€™t been force-fed
warnings of the dangers of Pagan England to their faith, their
chastity, their very souls. Irishness and Catholicism remained
immensely important to the bulk of those who went. But ultimately they
were less important than wages, houses, schools, prospects.

The most obvious thing about the Anglo-Irish relationship is this
plain fact of ordinary life €“ that hundreds of thousands of Irish
people found in England what they couldn€™t get at home: social
democracy. Yet, of course, this is also the reality that will not be
celebrated this week. Neither side really wants to talk about it.

The Irish don€™t want to talk about it because it says something
uncomfortable about class. The very fact that England is embodied for
us this week by a hereditary monarch reinforces a comfortable set of
oppositions. England is class-ridden; Ireland is classless. England
has never entirely shaken off feudal deference; Ireland is
egalitarian. Imagining England as the Queen allows us to imagine
ourselves as a republic.

What is conveniently lost in this is that our own class system is, and
has long been, much more rigid than the English one. Its monarchy and
aristocracy makes the English system much more blatant. But ours is
far more deadly and our emigrants knew this. The children of farm
labourers and dockers and street sweepers knew that their kids would
stand a much better chance in England than they ever would in an
Ireland where €œseed, breed and generation€ are the most loaded three
words in the language.

When we complain, as we ought to do, about the contempt that so many
Irish people had to endure as emigrants in England, we conveniently
forget that those people preferred it to the contempt that lay behind
the €œegalitarianism€ of our republic. Which shame would you rather
endure: being called a Paddy or living in a slum? Being patronised or
being unemployed? Having your national feelings hurt or having no
chance of a decent education for your kids? I know which options my
aunts and uncles took.

But, of course, it also suits the British side not to celebrate this
Irish attachment to their social democracy either. The post-war
welfare state, imperfect and incomplete as it was, is the greatest
positive achievement in British history. It was built on the greatest
negative achievement (endurance in the face of the

Nazi onslaught) and deployed the same qualities of hope and energy and
collective will. But it€™s being dismantled now, so it€™s best not
mention it.

Still, I€™ll think this week of my English cousins with their decent
jobs and pleasant houses and good education. And I€™ll raise a glass in
memory of the almost-dead €“ to English social democracy.

© 2011 The Irish Times

[strocube]

About a month ago I found myself pacing back and forth in front of my computer going "FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!" Over some bit of political minutia, then the light came on and I thought,"Dude, you don't have to look at or pay attention to any of this stuff, and guess what, if you don't, your life will go on pretty much just as it has."
So, after looking at Obama and deciding that he is really no different than the shrub, as far as these insane wars, military spending, giveaways to Wall Street, and state propaganda, I decided it's all pretty much WWF, you know, wrassling. It's a bunch of pre-scripted "information" fed to the the masses to keep them in line.
I'm done, over it. I hope the fascists ass-clowns, the republicans, run the biggest hee haw, brain dead, bible thumping, gun totting, sister fucking, kill-em-all-and-let-God sort-'em-out, cowboy they can find. It doesn't make any difference.
The empire and the US perpetual war machine will roll on just the same. Doesn't matter if you have a well spoken, thoughtful and literate person as president, or a brain-dead, pseudo cowboy like the shrub.
Fuck 'em all!
I am no longer following The Huffington Post, Truth Dig, NPR or Pacifica. When it comes to politics, I am essentially closing my eyes, covering my ears and going "la, la, la, la, la." It's been about a month and I feel much better

[pacman]

(strocube @ May 19 2011,07:58) I hope the the fascists ass-clowns, the republicans run the biggest hee haw, brain dead, bible thumping, gun totting, sister fucking, kill-em-all-and-let-God sort-'em-out, cowboy they can find. It doesn't make any difference.

You're on fire today Stro'... I love the descriptors...

Unfortunately it does make a difference. Maybe not to you but to the rest of the world. For my entire life everybody I knew respected America. Maybe they disagreed with them over Vietnam, OK, they all thought they were barmy buying into another countries civil war that had no bearing on anything, but there was a feeling that America could be trusted being in charge of the world's most powerful military force.

That consensus underwent a complete reversal during George W Bush's term in office. I have been to several social engagements over the past few years where completely rational people have finished up screaming about what has happened in the US.

I have tried to explain it to some American friends but it is hard for them to grasp this social phenomenon of one country falling out of love with another. I doubt this rift will ever be healed in my lifetime. Among my colleagues & friends it is very real & quite palpable.