Open Thread
By bluegal Wednesday Jul 28, 2010 8:30pmA gay child of a Tea Party candidate finds a way to cope. Hilarious video from the gang at BriteThorn.com.
Open thread below...
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is Comedy :-D
i so didn't want to enjoy that, and then I so did
Brilliant!
Excellent video mashup from MoveOn.org:
Shocking video shows Breitbart's true allegiance: Al-Qaeda
the people in the crowd thought his "hearting" of Al-Qaeda was particularly funny.
??
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Sarah Palin chose (B): Ten questions for mothers
http://litbrit.blogspot.com
living in Anaheim motels cross from Disneyland. Some truly disturbing images-- a 42-year old widow with four kids who's worked at Disney for two years but can't afford even a one-bedroom apartment. A teacher holds up a sign with the word "Rights" on it. One kid immediately chimes in with "the right to remain silent!"
Hard times in the land of plenty, indeed.
In 2001 or 2002 we saw the middle class of Argentina wiped out.
People tried to sell their household goods from their front lawns, then lost their homes, then en masse took up life along roadways and under freeway overpasses, all the result of banksters looting the national treasury and the IMF stepping in to "help" the economy.
The same neoliberal scams masquerading as policies they were inflicting on us.
By that time it was clear their NAFTA had decimated the American manufacturing sector, and I recall thinking then it wouldn't be too long before the American middle class suffered the same fate as the Argentinian had earlier.
Heartless bloodsucking bastards have no love of humanity nor nation.
my buddies just the other day about the tent cities. We hadn't heard about them for quite awhile in the media. They have to be growing with all the foreclosures happening. There is on just up the hill from us, but it's not in the media anymore but of course how does the MSM have time when Lindsey Lohan has to face a jail term?
The UN General Assembly on Wednesday recognized access to clean water and sanitation as a human right, a move hailed by water advocates as a momentous step toward a future treaty.
http://rawstory.com/rs/2010/0728/un-clean-wat...
About Time.
Plankton decline threatens food chain: 40% drop in plankton population since 1950 could affect humans.
Even after the Wikileaks revelations, even though there is no logical reason to be in Afghanistan, even though the war won't help the economy, and even though most Americans want us to get out, Congress keeps increasing funding for the endless war.
Jesse Ventura thinks we are in Afghanistan for the Lithium, any other ideas on why we are there?
to build military bases. To build pipelines, preferably (to the US) TAPI.
To ensure that the flow of opium and heroin resumes (recall that the Taliban had previously almost eliminated it entirely) and that all the profit goes to the "right" people.
is that profit funding a lot of CIA black ops?
American involvement in the international trade in opium (and later heroin) goes back to the late 1700s when England outlawed the international slave trade that had been so lucrative for New England's international shipping firms.
Faced with the loss of one of their principal sources of profit they sought new ways to use their assets - ships. They began transporting opium from India to China, addicting many Chinese (which came in handy years later when they needed Chinese laborers to build the American railroads).
That's the beginning of Anglo-American involvement in the opium trade.
Opium barons created Skull and Bones, the Yale fraternity.
The Forbes family fortune derives from the opium trade.
Bayer held the patent on heroin and sold it over the counter for decades, as a more powerful painkiller than their other patented product, aspirin, which was created from mint by exactly the same chemical process they later used to create heroin from opium.
In short (or is it too late for "in short"?) you can be certain there are many families still getting their squeeze from the opium trade and ALL of them were quite upset when the Taliban nearly eradicated ALL opium production in Afghanistan by the year 2000. That alone was reason enough to provoke the US invasion. no doubt about it.
To stabilize the situation in the area, particularly in Pakistan, the northwestern frontier area of that country being populated by a lot of ethnic Pashtuns- not ethnic Indians.
My theory is that, pre-9/11, the ISI was funding the Pashtun-dominated Taliban in Afghanistan so that the latter wouldn't foment a separatist movement amongst its cousins on the other side of the mountains- in Pakistan. Post-9/11, and due mostly to Bushco's disinterest in persecuting the war with AQ and the Afghanistan Taliban with enough force, the ISI was forced to stop funding north of the border, and the Taliban/Pashtuns in Pakistan started to threaten to break away from Pakistan.
So you're thinking, "Okay, so what?" right? Well, if the Pashtun's break away, it could cause instability between the Punjabis who hold the majority of key positions in the military and the ISI, and the Sindhis, the largest ethnic group in Pakistan, who tend to view relations with India in a different light than the Punjabis. You could very well be looking at a civil war that could draw in India and China. And, like Pakistan, India and China have nukes....
Think about it- we're talking about the neighborhood that contains the two largest national populations.
The US wants to deny Afghanistan to all of them, or at least control who gets to do what inside Afghanistan, whether it's oil, opium, natural gas, minerals, or routes of transit through Afghanistan.
Besides China, India, and Pakistan, I'd add Iran, Russia and Turkey to the list of other players in the region.
Have you thought about how much it would cost to protect any of those operations you listed? There's a reason Gazprom pulled out of the supply end of the proposed natural gas pipeline a few years before 9/11. There are too many little private armies that could fuck up transport into or out of Afghanistan anything of value.
I don't think Russia or Turkey come into play. Turkey's just too far away. Russia no longer borders Afghanistan. The player you nor I have brought up yet is....Iran. The majority of Afghanistan is ethnically Persian, but long separated. There are some Shias in Afghanistan, but Afghan people are mostly Sunni.
No, MM, this is about Pakistan's stability and preventing a Pakistani war with India.
[on edit]: Oh, I see you did mention Iran.
I thought the Taliban was encouraged in the '90s by the Clinton Admin. and Bhenazir Bhutto to pacifiy and centralize the Afghan countryside for economic reasons. Pakistan needed energy (specifically natural gas)for its growing economy and, of course, for Pakistan needed a safe western flank so its sights could be best set on India. The Taliban's record on women's rights, etc. was ignored until Madaline Albright made a big stink. Maybe Unocal and Bridas were just "pipe dreaming" about getting a line built but the Taliban were wined and dined in Houston.
I agree that India and Pakistan came close to war back in '98 but I think that resources are always in the picture when it comes to Afghanistan.
I think the ISI has always been playing a double-game with the CIA and the US. Many if not most of its senior members are Islamists.
...for all the history of Afghanistan you can find, but particularly from the 1970s on.
Yes, Bhutto and Clinton were both probably aiding the Taliban in some small way- Bhutto was allowing the recruitment by the ISI for incursions into India, but I think that was a bone for the ISI and the military in Pakistan to keep them gnawing on something other than her. As for Clinton- yeah, officially we never had diplomatic relations with their government, and I wouldn't doubt we were sliding them something in order to talk to them- but we were funding the Northern Alliance (big time) to keep up their struggles with the Taliban.
And if you didn't know, the Northern Alliance was dominated by Tajiks, who are mostly urban and relatively modern, while the Taliban's Pashtuns are rural and tribal.
I knew the US was funding Massoud in the north, but there was much mistrust on both sides. I think he was Tajik. I believe he was killed by Osama's foot soldiers right after 9/11.
Edit: The whole damn scene is so complicated!
Seriously, read up on the '70s, and the inter-ethnic violence that played out after the Shah of Afghanistan was deposed. It was one Soviet-backed group versus another Soviet-backed group that led up to the Soviet invasion.
The cw has always been filtered through Kennan: The Soviets invaded in order to make their way to the coveted warm-water port in Pakistan. I've begun thinking over the last ten years or so that they really went in only to stabilize the fucking mess they helped to create.
How much of a role did Zbigniew Brzezinski have in provoking the Soviets to invade? After all, he's been bragging about giving the Russians their own Vietnam for years.
Wed, 07/28/2010 - 21:55 — gogetem
The Taliban was considered a step up on the "War on Drugs," because they were destroying opium fields. So I believe early on they had our support but lost it, even while Clenis was still in office once the started with their more draconian version of Islam...
This war has many causes, not just one.
You are 100% correct that the standoff between Pakistan and India is ONE of the factors.
But so is controlling China's access to the region. And the opium trade. And oil.
But in all those cases, keeping the US in control is the #1 unifying factor.
Turkey IS a factor. Just recently the pro-Islamic party took power from the secular military and the new government has taken a role in unifying the Islamic Middle East. We saw that when Turkey recently partnered with Russia and Brazil to negotiate exchange of nuclear material with Iran, and when Turkey openly defied Israel's blackade of Gaza, then broke diplomatic relations with Israel in reataliation for their murder of Turkish civilians on the high seas.
And Russia certainly still has an interest there, as reflected in their assistance with both the American military effort and in re-supplying the Karzai govt with parts and service on Russian military hardware used by them. Russia certainly doesn't want a militant Islamic stronghold in the region.
So, you're correct that the Pakistan-India conflict is one of the central factors, but only one among many.
Natural gas. The oil's to the west. A pipeline to a Black Sea port like, uhm, GEORGIA would make the most sense. Thus Putin's continued saber-rattling on that front.
originally, it was the CENTGAS oil/natural gas pipeline. Then, as you say, protecting the pipelines became too dangerous and expensive. The Taliban wanted to much in exchange for their protection, and they didn't have the power to fully protect the pipelines anyway. But the thing is, once we are there (and by "we," I mean CIA/DIA/UNOCAL/Gazprom/etc.), we can find any excuse to stay. Heroin is one reason. The Pashtuns is another. Pakistan-Indian geopolitics is another. There is a limitless list of excuses to stay and keep running up the bill for Blackwater or DynCorp, Halliburton, KBR, etc., etc. Recently, the floated the gigantic mineral reserve as an excuse. The excuses will keep coming.
I recommend "Descent into Chaos-The US and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia" by Ahmed Rashid.
The MIC's got a bzillion tons of military hardware sitting in warehouses that has to be used to make way for the new killing machines.
And shareholders expecting their dividends.
And CEOs whose yacht payments are coming due.
And CongressCritters expecting their campaign donations.
Gotta keep those wheels of industry turning, right?
for the next the big one. Wars require lot's of raw materials, namely oil and minerals, which Iraq and Afghanistan have. Spreading 'democracy' and making our country and the world a 'safer' place has very little to do with it. Hence the reason the U.S. meddles in the affairs of other countries. War is a very lucrative business.
The WikiLeaks thing, I think is just another distraction.
will make a good 'Thug presidential candidate in 2012. "He's one of the most intelligent guys I know."
ROTFLMAO, even though my ulcer is killing me.
but when I watch the McLaughlin group, thet start the show by saying they are some of the smartest people in media or something like that. They have Pat Buchanon and Monica Crowley on for Christ sake.
that's what you get on your federally sponsered public TV channel.
You know CNN, the least trusted name in schmooze...
ex-nayed:
http://www.thewrap.com/media/column-post/excl...
proved Stones point, didn't he. Even billionaire media control freaks can be stupid.
every day the progressive blogosphere moves closer and closer to the right wing nutjobs that they despise....sad
call me when showtime cancels the show....which they wont
protesting and asking for a show to be canceled does not prove control
if saban controlled the media, he would simply make a phone call and it would never be publicized
about the closest to a propagandist if there ever was one.
http://www.israel-palestinenews.org/2010/05/h...
Israel cracks down on dissent
Did you happen to see this trippy interview of the Pakistani General by CNN???!:
http://kennysideshow.blogspot.com/2010/07/wik...
I'd love to hear what you think about this.
I was surprised, considering it was CNN (MSM) that this flew under the radar....
Look no further than Wikipedia:
So the guy who was using Taliban and AQ assets in India denies their involvement in 9/11. Uh huh.
that this interview never made the "MSM", especially considering the General was interviewed by CN freakin' N.
He was playing CYA and propagandizing. This is one of those Pakistanis who wants the new Caliphate to be centered on Islamabad.
Why do you come as so freakin' c#%k sure of who is telling the truth and who is lying?
Andy, are you having an argument with yourself again?
...what direct knowledge of any of your pet theories does General Gul have? All he does is deny that AQ or the Taliban played a roll- which he'd do if his own military and and intelligence agency had a hand in funding either of those entities- which they did. The ISI used the Taliban to sneak over the Indian border into to Jammu and Kashmir.
You do know that there are evil assholes everywhere, don't you? They existed long before there was a USA, and they'll exist long after its gone. As a matter of fact, the shit that's going on in that neighborhood began with the invasion of the Islamic Mughal's- based in Afghanistan- into Hindu India in 1526.
I was reading her leadoff as your comment. Disregard my last comment. It's late.
When you leaving to visit mom?
and I hope I still get to visit.
Godspeed to you, whenever you do leave.
lost both my parents years ago ..
hope you make it in time for visit ..
peace ..
interesting to hear someone at a high level saying those things.
and as you say amazing it appeared anywhere in the MSM
way too late here .. gonna crash .. GNA!
:)
its no secret that the shin bet spies on members of the ism
the ism is a terrorist front group
and proposal of laws is not the same as passage
unless the knesset pulls what our congress did with the patriot act
Unmade in China. Brewer continues her quest for segregation now. Crack/cocaine disparity fixed. Two thousand beaches closed cus of BP. Nazinegger returns with the furloughs. Hope for Boxer + Brown. Cops who shot bachelor party groom for being black leads to $7 million settlement. I wonder why.
one of the funniest cartoonists of the 20th and 21st centuries
59 is too young
NPH!
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