Obama's Betrayals Made Romney Credible

Everybody's biting their nails and holding their breath. What's going to happen? Who's going to win? The "Hollywood liberal" machine is out in full force with clever ads by luminaries like Joss Whedon of Avengers, Buffy and Firefly fame and hipster filmmaker Lena Dunham chiming in. There's no doubt that this is a dramatic finish and I've been reading coverage and watching the videos as avidly as the next person.

But this dramatic finish begs a question: how is Mitt Romney, a bigoted snobby billionaire with a lunatic Tea Party running mate, even a contender? I mean the stuff coming out of the mouths of Republican candidates about rape alone ought to make them little more than laughing stocks. That they are the candidates of one of the two main American political parties is a testament to how backwards and steeped in anti-intellectual superstition America has become. But it also tells us something about the failure of the Obama presidency.

Who doesn't remember the Obama rallies last time around - tens of thousands of people chanting "Yes, we can!", a slogan taken from the mass mobilizations of the immigrants rights movement. It seemed like everybody from every progressive social movement back then - from unions to gay rights to anti-war activists - was pouring into the campaign. Here was an opportunity to change America to a kinder, gentler nation after years of George W. Bush, proud ignoramus and spoiled brat.

What happened was the record of Obama. The bailouts went to the banks and the car companies - not to the ordinary people losing their homes in their millions. Gay rights, in particular gay marriage, was immediately shelved, leading to the first mass mobilizations demanding Obama do something. He didn't. Obama eventually drew down US troop presence in Iraqi cities - but he ramped it up in Afghanistan and increased the use of illegal, civilian killing drone strikes inside of Pakistan's borders. He promised comprehensive health care and instead came up with a plan that is a gift to the health insurance corporations. He has supported Israel's ongoing torment of the Palestinian people pretty much blindly and refuses to even smackdown the compulsive warmongering of the Middle East's colonial-settler state viz Iran. The list goes on.

Don't get me wrong, I think that Romney is an odious human being who lives on another planet. And were I in the USA I'd take the thirty seconds of democracy you get every few years and I'd put an "X" next to Obama's name. But I have no illusions that he behaves fundamentally any different in office than the Republicans with whom he has been more than happy to compromise over the last four years. He will do the same next time around. It is exactly for that reason that Romney is in the running and that the focus of the election has become not the issues but the maneuvering and marketing of the election campaign - who spends the most money, who has the most volunteers, etc. Until America produces a credible third party that is built out of the struggles of working people and the oppressed - rather than the crackpot pet projects of lunatics like Ross Perot - America will continue to be a two-party dictatorship (or, rather, one party with two wings).

I Refuse To Read 9/11 Memorial Coverage

If you're reading this right now you are doing something that I have refused to do: read any coverage or analysis of 9/11. I am boycotting the wall to wall coverage - the pull-out specials in the newspapers, the live coverage of ceremonies at ground zero (I assume there are ceremonies but I haven't been reading the coverage so I can't be sure). I'm even ignoring the critical coverage that is buried underneath all of the jingoism, mourning, and replaying of buildings billowing smoke. After all, what else can be said about 9/11? We know there has been several wars since then - putatively because of 9/11 but, in fact, argued for, threatened and planned for prior to the event. Way back when, everybody was quoting the founding documents of the Project for a New American Century, which advocated war against Iraq (a secular government with no ties - and significant animosity - towards radical Islamism). When we memorialize 9/11 as the reason for those wars we're participating in that lie.

Ah, but there I go, trying to analyze it. The truth is, it's pointless because the event has been drained of any rationality. It has become an endlessly repeated image of those burning towers and the necessary repetition of appropriate regret for the loss of life. There is literally nothing to say that won't be banal and commonplace to those who accept your particular viewpoint of the significance of the day - and which won't be utter blasphemy to those who don't.

Not many would say that I try to avoid thinking about world events and politics. Something happens somewhere in the world and I try to dig up the historical roots and uncover the social forces at play. It's a bit of an obsession at times. But this one event I will let pass - not because it's so special that I need to look away from the horror. 35,000 children die every day from preventable causes. Preventable causes. 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust. Anywhere from hundreds of thousands to 1.2 million died in Iraq as a result of the war - not counting the US enforced sanctions for a decade prior to the war. Nor do I want to ignore 9/11 because it isn't important. Certainly to the 3,000 people killed, their friends and family, 9/11 was a calamitous event. But, just as obviously, it was calamitous to the people who have been killed in wars, the societies destroyed, by wars supposedly in retribution for 9/11 [re: supposedly - see Project for a New American Century above].

No, the reason I won't read about 9/11 - not a word: I caught myself reading Chomsky on the al Jazeera website and forced myself to stop - is because we have lived it for ten years. We have seen it all - and if we happen to live in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine (yes, they got blamed too - we rarely miss a chance to kick the Palestinians around), Pakistan we felt the self-righteous fury of its manufactured response. We have seen this extended to our civil liberties - eroded significantly, almost without protest. We have seen it in a more bellicose form of rhetoric from politicians and media figures and a greater ease of military response to every crisis - we now slip on our fatigues to go and bomb "evil-doers" as easily as we put on our Wellingtons when the rain comes. We all know what 9/11 means and I don't need a special edition of the New York Times or, God help me, Glenn Beck to explain it.

We don't need more memorials. They're building a "Freedom Tower" in New York with 104 floors of skyline-dominating memorial. All you have to do is say "9/11" and every person in the western world, and probably most of the eastern, southern and northern world, can't help but have the iconic image pop into their mind - even if they try to think of the CIA coup against Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973. Even in countries that have suffered much greater tragedies, which is most countries, it was probably on the front page at some point in the last week. Making this event the obsession of the entire planet is somehow deeply pathological, like a monomania as we try to find the right emotional response to an event we're expected to have an emotional response towards. Meanwhile the house is burning down. I hate that I even remembered "where I was when I heard about it" several times today; once at a film festival bbq where we were expected to stop noshing and shmoozing to pay our respects for the dead. No: no more memorials. Talk to me about 9/11 when, instead of verbiage and symbols - and guns and bombs and F-35 fighter jets that cost a ba-zillion dollars - the memorial that is being offered is a plan to eliminate poverty at home and abroad, to stop supporting dictatorships that are convenient and bombing ones that aren't (especially the democratic ones that we call dictatorships because we don't like how people voted). In the meantime, stop trying to prove how profoundly on top of the meaning of the event you are in order to sell newspapers (how much extra has the New York Times made selling it's coverage - like to the T.O. Star?) or get people to tune in. It's like Christmas Day when no matter which channel you turn to you get people singing Christmas carols or delivering sermons. Just. Stop. Already.

Canada Wikileaks Releases: Tories & Liberals Lie All The Time

Lies on wheels: Harper on "Arctic sovereignty"... and everything else

Our government lies to us, they do it constantly and they do it without blinking. That's the only conclusion that can be drawn from the revelations contained in the U.S. diplomatic memos leaked by Wikileaks in April and May.

During the election campaign it was easy to overlook these nuggets of insight into how our government works - and how it is thought of by U.S. diplomats and state department officials. But it's a good lesson is in what we ought to expect from both the Liberals and the Tories.

Revealed in these memos is the honest truth about the fact that back in 2003, on the same day that Chretien was accepting kudos for supposedly refusing to join the US invasion of Iraq, the highest level Canadian officials were meeting with their U.S. counterparts. They were offering Canadian military assistance in whatever "discreet" way was possible.

As the briefing note describes the message coming from the Liberals:

"Following the meeting, political director Jim Wright emphasized that, despite public statements that the Canadian assets in the Straits of Hormuz will remain in the region exclusively to support Enduring Freedom, they will also be available to provide escort services in the Straits and will otherwise be discreetly useful to the military effort.

"The two ships in the Straits now are being augmented by two more en route, and there are patrol and supply aircraft in the U.A.E. [United Arab Emirates] which are also prepared to 'be useful.'"

And the double-dealing methods of the Liberals were inherited gleefully by the Stephen Harper Conservatives. Harper made a name for himself as the defender of the Canadian Arctic, promising increased defence spending to maintain Canadian interests. This chest-thumping is part of a wider "cold war" in the Arctic in response to the fact that climate change is creating the potential to not only access massive suspected reserves of oil but also the possible Northwest Passage from Europe to Asia, dreamed of at least since John Cabot made an effort to find it in 1497. Control of the passage would be of massive strategic and commercial value.

But while Harper talked big, he has done little, a fact that didn't go unnoticed to U.S. Ambassador at the time, David Jacobson. He joked that while Harper said "the issue has never been more important to our country... one could paraphrase to state 'the North has never been more important to our party" since it helped the Tories win the 2006 election. However, while Harper talked big in public, he did nothing in private leading a diplomatic memo to state:

"That the PM's public stance on the Arctic may not reflect his private, perhaps more pragmatic, priorities, however, was evident in the fact that during several hours together with Ambassador Jacobson on January 7 and 8, which featured wide-ranging conversations, the PM did not once mention the Arctic."

And in a move strongly reminiscent of Jean Chretien's on Iraq, Harper has worked behind the scenes to try and find a way to extend the mission in Afghanistan beyond the promised end date of 2011. The documents state that as far back as March, 2009 the Tories were "putting all options back on the table" with regards to extending the mission. A senior advisor to Harper, in a meeting with U.S. officials asked for patience while "public rhetoric" caught up with reality.

And, during a meeting with NATO chief, General Rasmussen, in January 2010, Harper promised to consider the option of keeping troops on, only noting that America's withdrawal was "unhelpful" to him making the case for extension. He also noted that they needed to "manage" the public message and, from Harper's perspective deal with the political difficulties generated by the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. By the end of 2010 Harper had agreed to extend the "non-combat" mission, though there will still be Canadian soldiers on the ground.

Lastly, the Wikileaks memos note that Harper did an "about face" on the question of an elected senate. The Tories and before them the Reform Party have had a strong position of support for senate reform, to make the body elected. Yet, even though the Tories have been in power for five years they have made no moves to implement this platform. In fact, the first thing that Harper did upon receiving a majority in the recent election was to appoint three Conservatives who lost to the Senate. Back in 2008, a U.S. diplomat noted wryly:

"[The appointment of 18 senators is] a major about-face for a PM and a party that long campaigned for an elected upper chamber. The cost of the eighteen new senators also conflicts with political messaging about the need for official belt tightening."

What all this reveals is that from the point of view of the Wikileaks memos, the Tories and the Liberals are harder and harder to tell apart. In fact, with the revelation that CSIS continues to secretly and illegally deliver the names of "terror suspects" to U.S. authorities - a process exposed by the plight of Maher Arar - it is clear that our elected politicians are in good company in engaging in dirty politics, unaccountability and a lack of transparency.

Predator Drone - $4 million. Insurgent Hacking Program - $25. Pentagon Embarrassment - Priceless

THE PENTAGON SPENDS CLOSE TO $1 TRILLION EVERY YEAR, between its regular budget and the money allocated to its various wars, policing operations, counterinsurgency programs and other murderous hobbies. They have an impressive array of super-duper-high-tech equipment to blow your mind - and blow your head off if you are an enemy of the United States of America. However, it seems that insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan were using a piece of $25 software, purchased off of the internet to intercept the video signals sent by Predator drones back to the remote pilots in the USA. This allowed them to see exactly what areas and people the deadly unmanned planes were surveying for attack. The US military is, of course, now fixing the problem but it could take a while: they have 600 of the $4 million vehicles.
Besides being a public embarrassment for the military, which is always a pleasure to see, this snafu is further demonstration that no matter how powerful the US military, it can never close all the gaps - gaps that a popular anti-colonial movement can take advantage of to the detriment of US/NATO occupying forces. This DIY resistance has been most powerfully felt, of course, in the widespread use of IED's - roadside bombs. While a leviathan like the USA can - and has - crushed popular movements in countries around the world, they are not invulnerable, especially where that movement has the support of broad swathes of the population.

Tony Blair Lied To Go To War In Iraq

HOW MANY TIMES DOES IT have to be shown that Blair is a lying, warmongering bastard before it finally sticks? There's now an Iraq war inquiry going on in Britain and, shock of shocks, Blair is accused of cocking up the mission because he was too busy lying about why they were going to Iraq. His official position was that the UK and the USA were just worried about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. Remember those? The ones that never existed. Not one. Well, even Blair's generals thought it was a pile of horse dung and were pissed because they were being sent to overthrow the government and rebuild the country on a new (neo-liberal) basis. Except that there couldn't be any planning about how to rebuild the country because officially, the concern was only with the non-existent WMDs.

Military commanders are expected to tell the inquiry into the Iraq war, which opens on Tuesday, that the invasion was ill-conceived and that preparations were sabotaged by Tony Blair's government's attempts to mislead the public.

They were so shocked by the lack of preparation for the aftermath of the invasion that they believe members of the British and US governments at the time could be prosecuted for war crimes by breaching the duty outlined in the Geneva convention to safeguard civilians in a conflict, the Guardian has been told.

Sen. McCain Blames "Political Correctness" For Fort Hood Massacre

Two cheeks of the same ass

YOU THOUGHT HE WAS DUMB FOR PICKING PALIN as his running mate? Or maybe for singing "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" during a sound check prior to an election speech? Well, John McCain has definitely lathered the idiot-icing on the stupid-cake. Speaking at the Halifax International Security Forum, ie. warmongers from Europe and the Americas, McCain suggested that "political correctness" played a role in preventing anyone from doing anything about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan before it was too late.
In one sense, he's right - if politicians like him hadn't voted for war in Iraq and Afghanistan there wouldn't be hundreds of thousands of damaged men and women returning from brutalizing populations halfway around the world. And Hasan wouldn't have faced racist harassment on a daily basis. But it was politically correct to support the vilest of wars and the suspension of civil liberties. It was politically correct to keep sending soldiers back into war zones to kill and die, even though it was leading to growing rates of suicide and inter-personal violence. And we know this is what was - and continues to be - politically correct because trash like McCain are rewarded for it by being paid big bucks to be Sentators and big bucks to come to Canada to peddle their filth.
But I suspect that we won't hear anyone calling John McCain politically correct because that would be politically incorrect - just like it would be to point out that at Fort Hood 76 soldiers have committed suicide since 2003 - out of a population of about 50,000, much higher than the national average. And it isn't only suicides:

Col. Edward McCabe, a Catholic chaplain at Fort Hood, said signs of fatigue and other strains are “rampant” on the base. “The numbers of divorces I’ve had to deal with are huge, the cases of physical abuse,” Colonel McCabe said. “Every night in my apartment complex some soldier and his wife are screaming and shouting at each other.“

It really is time for McCain to retire and take his prehistoric ideas with him.

Obama Refuses Letter, Handshake From Iraq Veteran

WHEN PRESIDENT OBAMA WAS AT FORT HOOD he shook the hands of soldiers who stood in line to greet him. All of them, that is, except for Michael Kern who is president of the Fort Hood chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War and, himself, a veteran. Kern offered his hand and the letter below but Obama refused both and moved on to the next soldier. The secret service took the letter instead. Perhaps even now the presidential food-tasters are licking the paper to see if it was poisoned. It is, in any case, a plea worth reading and it is being used as a petition that you can sign here.

President Obama:
In your recent comments on the Fort Hood tragedy, you stated "These are men and women who have made the selfless and courageous decision to risk and at times give their lives to protect the rest of us on a daily basis. It's difficult enough when we lose these brave Americans in battles overseas. It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an Army base on American soil." Sir, we have been losing these brave Americans on American soil for years, due to the mental health problems that come after deployment, which include post-traumatic stress disorder, and often, suicide.
You also said that "We will continue to support the community with the full resources of the federal government". Sir, we appreciate that-but what we need is not more FBI or Homeland Security personnel swarming Fort Hood. What we need is full mental healthcare for all soldiers serving in the Army. What happened at Fort Hood has made it abundantly clear that the military mental health system, and our soldiers, are broken.
You said "We will make sure that we will get answers to every single question about this terrible incident." Sir, one of the answers is self evident: that a strained military cannot continue without better mental healthcare for all soldiers.
You stated that "As Commander-in-Chief, there's no greater honor but also no greater responsibility for me than to make sure that the extraordinary men and women in uniform are properly cared for." Sir, we urge you to carry out your promise and ensure that our servicemembers indeed have access to quality mental health care. The Army has only 408 psychiatrists — military, civilian and contractors — serving about 553,000 active-duty troops around the world. This is far too few, and the providers that exist are often not competent professionals, as this incident shows. Military wages cannot attract the quality psychiatrists we need to care for these returning soldiers.
We ask that:
1. Each soldier about to be deployed and returning from deployment be assigned a mental health provider who will reach out to them, rather than requiring them to initiate the search for help.
2. Ensure that the stigma of seeking care for mental health issues is removed for soldiers at all levels-from junior enlisted to senior enlisted and officers alike.
3. Ensure that if mental health care is not available from military facilities, soldiers can seek mental health care with civilian providers of their choice
4. Ensure that soldiers are prevented from deploying with mental health problems and issues.
5. Stop multiple redeployments of the same troops.
6. Ensure full background checks for all mental health providers and periodic check ups for them to decompress from the stresses they shoulder from the soldiers they counsel to the workload they endure.
Sir, we hope that you will make the decision not to deploy one single Fort Hood troop without ensuring that all have had access to fair and impartial mental health screening and treatment.
You have stated on a number of occasions, starting during your campaign, how important our military and veterans are to this nation. The best way to safeguard the soldiers of this nation is to provide ALL soldiers with immediate, personal and professional mental health resources.
-Iraq Veterans Against the War

Fort Hood Allegations Build On Racist Mythology

THIS MORNING I READ THAT SOME ANONYMOUS SPOOK told ABC news that the CIA knew Hasan was trying to contact al Qaeda (do they have a mailing address?). However, they did nothing about it, told no one, refuse to officially say anything and really only decided to send out an anonymous and widespread rumour now, when it is useful for propaganda purposes. Now, either the CIA are thoroughly incompetent or this is simply an attempt to massage the message in order to get the best spin for the purposes of the war effort. With Italy offering two dozen CIA agents an extended tour in an Italian jail for kidnapping and delivering a "Muslim suspect" to a third country for torture you will excuse me if I think that the timing is convenient for the CIA.
Of course, this whole dissection is a totally absurd case of politically motivated character assassination as a means to avoid the more troubling political implications of his action. Let's unpack some of this racist nonsense for a moment, shall we. What does it mean that he was trying to contact al Qaeda? The article never says and nobody is accountable for this anonymous rumour. So there is no way to verify any of its claims. Did he go to an Islamist website? Did he order an al Qaeda decoder ring in the mail? My guess is that this is nothing but spin based on something very flimsy, else there would be more than an abstract suggestion.
Then there is the article that claims Hasan visited a local strip club to have lap dances. Hasan is becoming, like Osama bin Laden, an Emmanuel Goldstein. Goldstein was the invented boogeyman used to frighten the population into line with the policies of Big Brother in the book 1984. Everyone will now have seen him - at the corner store, at strip clubs, at the mosque, in the cafeteria. And every story will take incidental events that were apropos of nothing and inflate them out of all proportion to create an image appropriate to a secondary figure in the anti-Islamic demonology of America. If he said he opposed the war and thought it was a war against Islam - the second belief being one that is regularly promoted by conservative figures - this is proof that he is a supporter of al Qaeda. The logical corollary that is being implied in all this is, of course, that all Muslims support al Qaeda. Not only is this untrue but because the western media has so thoroughly de-intellectualized al Qaeda - a product of US guns and money during the Afghan war against Soviet occupation - that there's no way to understand the organization or sympathy for it except in the terms of good vs evil. Bush put it clearly in his address to Congress following 9/11:

"Americans are asking, why do they hate us? They hate what they see right here in this chamber -- a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms -- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other. They want to overthrow existing governments in many Muslim countries, such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. They want to drive Israel out of the Middle East. They want to drive Christians and Jews out of vast regions of Asia and Africa. These terrorists kill not merely to end lives, but to disrupt and end a way of life. With every atrocity, they hope that America grows fearful, retreating from the world and forsaking our friends. They stand against us, because we stand in their way."

In a psychopathological passive-aggressive projection the United States, the world's most powerful empire, with bases in dozens of countries around the world, with a military budget higher than the rest of the world's countries combined, has become a victim of envy. It is not that the US "overthrows existing government in many Muslim countries", including democratically elected ones, unlike those used without irony in the Bush speech. It is not that the US military and government has consistently opposed the very freedoms listed by Bush in almost every country in the developing world. It is simply that a small, despised and underground movement, hidden in mountains and caves - like western fantasies about some Ali Baba - is an evil force trying to destroy our way of life. This logic must lead to racism for the simple reason that once you eliminate all the real world complexities of cause and effect, of history and political decisions, all you have left are mystical explanations about some evil character within Islam. Sure, there's some good Muslims - but they are only good insofar as they "moderate" their Islam, they become, in the words of Pat Robertson, "Islam lite". As for the rest:

"Ladies and gentlemen, we have to recognize that Islam is not a religion. It is a worldwide political movement meant on domination of the world. And it is meant to subjugate all people under Islamic law."

And Hasan has gone from being a real world man, deeply troubled and socially isolated, not least for being a Muslim in an army rife with Islamophobia, to being a "terrorist". We can now use him to scare the children, mobilize the troops for a renewed effort to defend our way of life and publicly lynch him to purge ourselves of the fears that have weakened the national resolve. We will sleep better again knowing that these wars aren't destroying the minds and bodies of the soldiers sent to prosecute them. Any that develop psychological disorders will simply have "gone native", "become increasingly radical", gone over to the dark side. We will be safe once again in our ignorance, until the next act of mass murder forces us to revise our mythology and add a new demon to the pantheon.

Statement From Fort Hood Veterans

THIS VERY GOOD STATEMENT about the shooting at Fort Hood is by the Fort Hood chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War is one that should be read and passed around widely. It puts the tragic news in its proper context.


Our community is distraught by the tragic shooting at Fort Hood yesterday. We extend our condolences to the families and friends of the victims.

As upset as we are about this incident, this shooting does not come as a shock. Eight years of senseless wars have taken a huge toll on our troops and their families. It’s time to admit that the wars in southwest Asia are in no one’s best interests. Bring the troops home now!

The Army has also repeatedly demonstrated that it is more interested in making soldiers “deployable” than it is in helping them fully recover from PTSD and other mental health issues. This often leaves soldiers with few options other than to self-medicate with drugs and alcohol. The Army routinely deploys soldiers who are clearly suicidal and homicidal. Yesterday was a gruesome reminder of the possible violent consequences of this policy. We hope the Army now takes its duty to take care of soldiers more seriously.

We demand transparency from the Army and other federal agencies involved with this investigation.

Under the Hood Café provides military service members support with referrals to legal, financial, and medical services. It is a space for troops to freely express their views on the wars and the military. It also offers GI rights counseling. Iraq Veterans Against the War calls for the immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces in Iraq, reparations for the human and structural damages Iraq has suffered, and full benefits for returning military.

Under the Hood Café
Iraq Veterans Against the War – Fort Hood Chapter

Fort Hood Shootings: Don't Let Racism Hide Truth

BY NOW EVERYBODY ON THE PLANET KNOWS about the killing of 12 people and wounding of 31 others at Fort Hood in Texas. There's no doubt that this is a tragedy for the families and friends of the slain. But from a tragedy like this there will inevitably issue forth a second tragedy - the racist, anti-Muslim hysteria that will follow because the man - Major Nidal Malik Hasan - was from a Palestinian background. And that hysteria - already in evidence in online newspaper comments boxes - will obscure the real issues and the real reasons for this tragedy. Hiding from the truth will only ensure more tragedies like this in the future. So, let's go through some of the truths.
1) The sheer racism involved in immediately speculating on the religion of the shooter. Back in May, an Army Sgt. stationed in Iraq and suffering from PTSD shot and killed five of his fellow soldiers. That man's name - John Russell - was Anglo Saxon. Nobody speculated on the role of his religion in the killing. In this instance, as an article in the New York Times makes clear, Hasan, who joined the military out of patriotism, faced harassment for being Muslim and wanted out, even pursuing a failed legal route to early discharge. As a psychiatrist, he had counseled many returning vets who suffered PTSD. The combination of these two things apparently made him "mortified" at the prospect of being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan.

2) This racism also provides a cover for the fact that men and women trained to kill and who experience the brutality of enforcing occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, suffer from mental breakdowns, suicides and commit murders at far higher rates than the general population. A 2007 CBS News investigation into military suicides found:

"Veterans aged 20 through 24, those who have served during the war on terror... had the highest suicide rate among all veterans, estimated between two and four times higher than civilians the same age. (The suicide rate for non-veterans is 8.3 per 100,000, while the rate for veterans was found to be between 22.9 and 31.9 per 100,000.)"

And according to an article in the Washington Post, based in part upon an investigation by the Colorado Springs Newspaper, the rate of homicides amongst veterans from the Fourth Infantry Division's Fourth Brigade were 114 times higher than the rate amongst the general population in Colorado Springs, where they are stationed stateside.

"During their deployment, some soldiers killed civilians at random -- in some cases at point-blank range -- used banned stun guns on captives, pushed people off bridges, loaded weapons with illegal hollow-point bullets, abused drugs and occasionally mutilated the bodies of Iraqis, according to accounts the Gazette attributed to soldiers who said they witnessed the events."

Another study by the New York Times found that at least 120 people had been killed by returning vets. However, the Times itself assumes that this is a conservative number since it was reached only by looking at newspaper reports and it only includes active-duty soldiers and new veterans. The CBS survey used government statistics.

3) The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have led to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocents and the destruction of infrastructure and social networks that will take generations to repair. The media and government are utter, utter hypocrites to condemn these murders while taking no note - or reporting as simply normal operation procedure - the families slaughtered wholesale by US drones that fire missiles at wedding and funeral parties, into Pakistani villages. In Afghanistan alone there have been an estimated 8,400 - 28,000 direct and indirect civilian deaths caused by ISAF and US forces.

4) Mass murder has become as American as apple pie with dozens killed in spree murders this year alone. What is it about American society that brings about such a large number of these types of violent acts? The roots have to be found in the fact that America is the world's biggest, most violent empire, whose means of domination and largest single budget outlay goes towards the military. This year alone the military will take up to $700 billion directly with more indirectly through military aid to countries such as Israel and Colombia. This is a country jacked on violence. America, as the wealthiest nation on earth, also had the third highest levels of inequality and poverty in a study by the OECD released in 2008.  The only two countries above the US were Turkey and Mexico. The combination of poverty and glorified violence, in the shadow of historically unprecedented levels of wealth creation is key to understanding the prevalence of violence in America.


There is a danger that in the days following the Fort Hood shootings, the right and the media will whip up terrible racism. Arguing wherever possible the real reasons for this terrible act will be an important part of the ideological struggle to maintain the momentum of opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. We mustn't allow the truth to drown in a sea of racist filth.

Clinton Speech A Bust - Paid For By Tax Dollars

Clinton showed up to speak at a half-empty stadium in Toronto on Saturday. He was saved the embarrassment of facing 20 guys sweating in blue suits by the CNE dropping the price from $50 to $5. Clinton, who dropped more bombs on third world countries than G.W. Bush, told the sweaty, beer-drinking crowd that the world's poorer countries "the developing world still needs our help organizing functioning systems to alleviate poverty." I'm sure those bombs on Iraq helped them get their act together. And the Battle of Mogadishu, portrayed in Blackhawk Down, played a great role in creating the stable and prosperous Somalia we see today.

I can't help but think that almost anything would have been a better expenditure of the $3 million that the CNE received for this from Ottawa's stimulus fund (I'm sure there's some countries in the developing world that could have organized some "functioning systems", for instance). My guess is that the CNE lost a bundle on this boondoggle of warmed-over platitudes, when you take into account the money spent on massively promoting the event and paying Clinton his gold-plated fee to speak to a half-empty stadium: "Officials aren't saying how much Mr. Clinton will earn for the appearance, though his fee is typically around $175,000." No wonder he flew up here so quick from Ted Kennedy's funeral. I'm sure the speaking fee helped him work through his grief.

Iggy Got His Wish: The CIA Tortured Lots of People

There’s lots of heads that are going to roll over the CIA abuse scandal. Though, likely, most of them will just be disposable flunkies. The real brains behind the use of “coercive interrogation”, like Dick Cheney won’t have any mud flung at them to slide off their oily, Teflon skin.
(GW Bush, of course, can’t be said to be the brains behind anything except maybe brushing his teeth before bed.)
The report that was released Monday, details CIA abuses, including threatening a suspect with a power drill, extensive use of “waterboarding”, threatening to kill another suspect’s children, mother and female relatives, along with numerous deaths in CIA custody.
These sickos were still such consummate bureaucrats that when some CIA goon innovated a new torture technique called water dousing, they sent it into headquarters for specific approval. In true bureaucrat fashion, they came up with acceptable guidelines for tormenting a suspect:
“A return cable explained that a detainee ‘must be placed on a towel or sheet, may not be placed naked on the bare cement floor, and the air temperature must exceed 65 degrees if the detainee will not be dried immediately.’”
Of course, this is just the piece de resistance of a whole unraveling of the former Bush administration’s neo-conservative global lunacy. These guys thought that they would be in the right to burn your house down if you bought a dog because it might, at some point in the future, attack the child that they were planning on having, if only they could find someone crazy enough to marry them.
In 2008, the CIA’s former executive director, and the man behind setting up a string of CIA secret prisons (read: torture facilities), Dusty Foggo, pleaded guilty to fraud related to kick-backs from his buddy who got the contracts to build the prisons. Dusty is now spending 3 years in jail. The real story is that he was a casualty in the internecine war that erupted in America’s military and security institutions between the neo-con crazies and the old school scumbags when the whole PNAC wet dream started to go belly up.
A couple of other jackals who led the interrogation program (read: torture training) and made a bundle out of their independent torture consulting firm, had the plug pulled on their CIA contracts after Obama took office. Hopefully he lost that $800 000 house in Florida, bought out of the proceeds of war crimes.
The CIA, Dick Cheney and all the other creepy crawlies can be expected to stand up for torture in response to the investigation into abuses. Already the CIA has hit back by releasing previously classified documents on the interrogation program, lauding its ‘many successes.’ It is called, in one of the documents “a pillar of counter-terrorism”. I wonder if they’ll also stand up for the CIA’s contracting out of contract killing to Blackwater, that pinnacle of ethical corporate behaviour. Probably not, since Blackwater failed to actually knock off any leading members of Al Qaeda and the contract was cancelled. Their specialty really doesn’t extend beyond killing untrained and defenseless civilians.
Of course, there’s a big, fat question that no one is asking, least of all the Obama Administration as they ramp up the death machine in Afghanistan. Why is it OK to bomb weddings, schools and farms from the sky while, on the other hand, simulating drowning (or threatening to kill suspects’ family members) is in poor taste. It seems to me that one leads to the other. Torture, military occupation, secret prisons, and forms of resistance that require the vicious fist of repression, all go together with imperialism. You can either get rid of foreign military adventures or you end up with torture on the ground and death from the sky. Simple as that.
That’s why it’s not a big surprise that Obama fully intends to continue the policy of extraordinary renditions. Of course, only as long as the country in question promises to be nice when they interrogate the prisoner. Sort of like Syria promised to be nice to Maher Arar.
But there’s another side to this that you won’t read about in the New York Times and which it’s unlikely any Canadian newspapers will bring up. It’s the role of Michael Ignatieff in all this. Iggy was an avid promoter of “coercive interrogation”, including on national television (see below, what an asshole – and he has ridiculous hair). This guy is slated to be Canada’s next Prime Minister, though the Liberals haven’t been able to pick anybody who wasn’t a spineless fuck-up since that Shawinigan mobster what’s-his-face Chretien. Lucky for Iggy, our present PM Stephen Harper is leader of a party of tinfoil hat-wearing, whack-jobs only kept in line with Harper’s iron fist. Whenever the batteries run out on the Tasers of the Tory party whips, the MPs start to open their mouths and the Tories drop in the polls.
You won’t catch me crying in my beer if the Tories get their asses whupped in the next election, probably this fall. But remember, when you go to put an X next to Iggy’s Liberals, their leader publicly stumped for a policy that even the US ruling class finds revolting. Do you really think he’s an alternative?

Five Years Since Millions Marched Against War

Happy 5th anniversary, you dreamers for peace.
I remember the day clearly, in part because it was so damn cold. My face was frozen, my fingers were frozen, well, everything was frozen. I was driving the van that brought the sound equipment to the demonstration that day and had worked the night before so I was very tired.
But as cold as it was and as early as it was, it was clear that this was going to be something very big. You can always tell when it's going to be a big protest because people arrive early. Anybody who's been on more than one demonstration knows that rallies never, ever start on time, so you might as well show up late. But when people are coming early, it's because they've never demonstrated before. So, when you get those people, it's going to be a big one. On February 15, 2003 in Toronto - and hundreds of other cities around the world - it was a big one.
By some estimates, it was the single largest movement of people on a single day in human history, pushing 30 million by many estimates. In London, UK, alone there were some 2 million on the streets (see pic below). It was that big. In Toronto, we were 80,000, the largest protest since the Toronto General Strike as part of the Days of Action movement in 1996.
It was electric. There we were standing in Dundas Square, watching people pour in from every directions. Seas of people and placards and homemade banners filled the streets. The police didn't even bother to try to stop them. On that day the streets were ours.
February 15 didn't stop the war - though the mobilizations across Canada, especially the 250,000 in Montreal, did ensure Canada didn't officially participate. But it made the boneheads and chickenhawks who make the decisions to send the young to kill and die in faraway places for oil wealth and imperial power think twice before starting the next one. I remain convinced that were it not for the domestic and international opposition to the war against Iraq in the US and the UK we would already be fighting in Iran. And the Harper Tories wouldn't have to hide behind weasel words and sneaky maneuvers to keep us in Afghanistan.
February 15 was, quite simply, a moment of real history. I hope you were there.

Will Obama Win The Election... In Canada?

Obama is wiping up the map with Hilary. In the last week the Democrat presidential hopeful swept 8 primaries and passed her with the largest number of committed delegates. The excitement around his campaign is astounding in a country that has made electoral abstention a national pastime. His figures for fundraising are out of this world, with well over 400,000 people contributing to his campaign since January 1.
“If the Obama campaign can maintain this fundraising pace -- online donations poured in at the rate of more than $500,000 an hour after his overwhelming victory in South Carolina -- it's likely that Obama will raise upwards of $30 million online this month.”
And people are coming out to see him speak in droves. At the University of Maryland on the weekend, some 17,000 people – heavily youth – came out to a boisterous rally.
Why’s everybody going crazy for Barack Obama?
Well, for one thing he voted against the war in Iraq. And for another, he still opposes the war on Iraq. He also manages to mention the 4 million Iraqi refugees displaced by the US war on that country.
He talks about universal healthcare in a country where 47 million people, including 9 million children have no insurance coverage. It’s true his solution leaves untouched the insurance corporations. But it’s something, and people are desperate.
On the economy he’s talking about tax cuts for middle and low-income earners while reversing tax cuts for the rich. And he’s moderately pro-union, wanting to make it easier for workers to organize into unions and illegal for employers to hire permanent scabs.
Better than a kick in the head, for sure, but it’s hardly radical stuff and he’s hardly a radical guy. In fact, he’s not very good on any number of issues, including Iran, against which he has refused to rule out a military strike though to be fair he has since backed off on that and talked up diplomacy. And he’s a whole-hog supporter of Israel in its war against the Palestinians (and Lebanon and…). But after eight years of Bush, it's like mana from heaven.
And there’s another element – he’s black. This is a nation built on the backs of African slaves. This is the nation of the KKK, segregation and the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This is the nation of Rodney King and the post-Katrina ethnic cleansing of New Orleans.
Does it matter to us up here in Canada?
If there’s an increase in anti-war rhetoric and a momentum behind Obama as the “anti-war candidate”, there is no way that this won’t hurt the Tories who are the Canadian branch of the Neo-Conservative Loony Society.
Harper has toed the Bush line more than Bush himself. He is a unilateralist war monger. He's done everything he could to scuttle Kyoto - and any meaningful climate action. The Tories have tried to undermine abortion rights and roll back gay marriage.
A wave of support for someone who's reputation is for progressive change - even if it outstrips his actual politics - will be a powerful counter-example of a continental shift and that will hurt Harper. It will also give confidence to the ever-opportunist Liberals that the way to victory is by campaigning on a progressive platform.
In any case, I think it may be too late for the Tories – because of the economy, because of the war, because of Obama. But I’m a notorious optimist.
In the here and now, if I were in the USA would I vote for Obama? Would I work on his campaign?
Wow, that’s tough. Here’s what I know: the Democrats are the second-wing of America’s two party capitalist dictatorship – not to put too fine a point on it. They are owned lock, stock and barrel by the corporations who contribute most of the party’s cash. They are the party of slavery, segregation, Vietnam, war in the Balkans, the bombing of Iraq and Sudan, the doubling of the prison population, etc etc. They are a vile corrupt machine.
But if they are drawing in masses upon masses of anti-war youth on the campuses and politicizing them, it would be foolish to turn down the opportunity and stand on the sidelines. Just telling people – “the Democrats won’t change anything” – isn’t sufficient. The only serious question that I can see in this is: is it possible to use the Obama campaign to deepen anti-war and anti-corporate organizing on the campuses and in the communities? Because regardless of Obama’s sincerity, there will be no change, including no phased withdrawal of troops, unless there’s mobilizing on the streets, campuses and communities. That’s a question that activists in the USA will have to ask and answer themselves.
What I do know is that if the Republicans are defeated by a young, black man known as an opponent of the war in Iraq, it will be electric. And I want to see it happen.

Artists Against The War

The Society of Illustrators in New York city has an exhibit of anti-war illustrations on display from January 3 until January 28. It's being held in conjunction with The Nation magazine. There's some beautiful and disturbing work there by some of America's leading illustrators. If you're in New York you can see it in person. Definitely check it out. And while we're on the subject of artists against the war - Artists Against War in Toronto, Canada has set up a Facebook group that is growing fast. We've been around since 2003, organizing events and fundraisers for the anti-war movement. Last summer we held an outdoor film festival called Peace Reel, that is planned again for this summer. And our annual conference - Art Changes Everything - is coming up April 12. So, get on over to Facebook and hook up with us.