The world war on democracy

[sad sally]

Lisette Talate died the other day. I remember a wiry, fiercely intelligent woman who masked her grief with a determination that was a presence. She was the embodiment of people's resistance to the war on democracy. I first glimpsed her in a 1950s Colonial Office film about the Chagos islanders, a tiny creole nation living midway between Africa and Asia in the Indian Ocean. The camera panned across thriving villages, a church, a school, a hospital, set in a phenomenon of natural beauty and peace. Lisette remembers the producer saying to her and her teenage friends, "Keep smiling girls!"

Sitting in her kitchen in Mauritius many years later, she said, "I didn't have to be told to smile. I was a happy child, because my roots were deep in the islands, my paradise. My great-grandmother was born there; I made six children there. That's why they couldn't legally throw us out of our own homes; they had to terrify us into leaving or force us out. At first, they tried to starve us. The food ships stopped arriving [then] they spread rumours we would be bombed, then they turned on our dogs."

In the early 1960s, the Labour government of Harold Wilson secretly agreed to a demand from Washington that the Chagos archipelago, a British colony, be "swept" and "sanitised" of its 2,500 inhabitants so that a military base could be built on the principal island, Diego Garcia. "They knew we were inseparable from our pets," said Lizette, "When the American soldiers arrived to build the base, they backed their big trucks against the brick shed where we prepared the coconuts; hundreds of our dogs had been rounded up and imprisoned there. Then they gassed them through tubes from the trucks' exhausts. You could hear them crying."
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Remember the tear-stained headlines when Brand Obama was elected: "momentous, spine-tingling": the Guardian. "The American future," wrote Simon Schama, "is all vision, numinous, unformed, light-headed ..." The San Francisco Chronicle's columnist saw a spiritual "lightworker [who can] usher in a new way of being on the planet". Beyond the drivel, as the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg had predicted, a military coup was taking place in Washington, and Obama was their man. Having seduced the anti-war movement into virtual silence, he has given America's corrupt military officer class unprecedented powers of state and engagement. These include the prospect of wars in Africa and opportunities for provocations against China, America's largest creditor and new "enemy" in Asia. Under Obama, the old source of official paranoia Russia, has been encircled with ballistic missiles and the Russian opposition infiltrated. Military and CIA assassination teams have been assigned to 120 countries; long planned attacks on Syria and Iran beckon a world war. Israel, the exemplar of US violence and lawlessness by proxy, has just received its annual pocket money of $3bn together with Obama's permission to steal more Palestinian land.

http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-world-war-on-democracy?su

[atreides1]

1. Guess the US studied the Final Solution

Luckily they only used it on dogs...but that doesn't guarantee anything!

The US Government doesn't believe in Democracy anymore then Stalin believed in God...and if what's happened after 9/11 isn't enough evidence of that, then the dumbing down process is working as planned!

[awoke_in_2003]

22. if people get in their way...

they will slaughter them, too.

[tabatha]

2. "long planned attacks on Syria and Iran beckon a world war"

There has never been a long planned war on Iran or Syria.

Utter BS

[rhett o rick]

5. The neo-cons would disagree with you. Who are you referring to? nm

[tabatha]

7. see #5

[sad sally]

10. I've been roundly reminded here that the US always has a plan for war - anywhere, anytime

Take a look at the recently released DoD paper on Worldwide Military Dominance. It starts with this statement (don't imagine it eliminates Iran and/or Syria as potential regions of the world the US would project its military force):

Enduring requirement for force projection. As a global power with
global interests, the United States must maintain the credible capability to
project military force into any region of the world in support of those interests.
While the requirement for operational access applies to any mission, the most
difficult access challenge—and therefore the subject of this concept—is
operational access contested by armed opposition.

http://www.defense.gov/pubs/pdfs/JOAC_Jan%202012_Signed.pdf?du

[tabatha]

17. Of course they do.

But that does not mean they will go to war all over the world at any time.

[bemildred]

20. That is delusuional Pentagon marketing babble.

Simple observation shows that we can't even manage enduring force projection in the Middle East. Shock-and-awe is all we do well now, and the Rubes overseas are no longer impressed by such displays. The last 60 years have been a long, bumpy downhill slide, and a great deal of that is due the the ludicrous, arrogant, and simple-minded foreign policy which we have pursued with such determination.

[sad sally]

21. This marketing babble is sucking America dry; while delusuional, it has shaped democracy

- albeit a farce of the meaning - in this country. It's like America is in an arms race with itself.

[bemildred]

23. That is what marketing babble is for, to suck money. nt

[rhett o rick]

3. Democracy and capitalism can not co-exist. The capitalists have the power

but we wont go out w/o a fight.

[sad sally]

4. "Only when you take direct action, face to face, even break laws, are you ever noticed,"

This invisible state allowed the Blair government to fight the Chagos islanders as they rose from their despair in exile and demanded justice in the streets of Port Louis and London. "Only when you take direct action, face to face, even break laws, are you ever noticed," said Lisette. "And the smaller you are, the greater your example to others." Such an eloquent answer to those who still ask, "What can I do?"

I last saw Lisette's tiny figure standing in driving rain alongside her comrades outside the Houses of Parliament. What struck me was the enduring courage of their resistance. It is this refusal to give up that rotten power fears, above all, knowing it is the seed beneath the snow.

[rhett o rick]

11. The president refused to fix the problem of arrest and detention of American

citizens codified by the NDAA of 2012. His signing statement isnt legally binding. Almost all of Congress supported this bill, so the message is out there. The capitalist bullies can not back down. IMO they will answer the next round of demonstrations with even more brutality because they can. I do not see a good way out, there is too much at stake. Power is an zero-sum game.

Coming to a venue near you, Occupy II: The American Spring. Sooner or later you will have to take a side.

[sad sally]

14. I'm inclined not to join clubs that would have me as a member, but I know what side I'll be on.

And I have a hunch it ain't gonna' be a peaceful American Spring.

[rhett o rick]

19. I agree with you. nm

[tabatha]

5. Bush CIA director talks honestly about why attacking Iran is a bad idea

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10168739

[rhett o rick]

8. And you know he "talks honestly" how? nm

[tabatha]

9. Yes.

Clinton wanted to bomb Iran, but he was talked out of it by the military.

The military have run simulations, and there is no way that the US can win a war against Iran.

I posted that article sometime this week.

http://newworldorderreport.com/Default.aspx?tabid=266&ID=4957

[rhett o rick]

13. I dont believe that not being able to "win" a war is enough to keep us out of a war.

War equals huge profits for the mega-corps. They would do Vietnam all over again if they could. The mega-corps dont care who wins as long as they profit.

[tabatha]

15. That is some sick thinking.

If Bush could have, he would have.

The military has said no.

[rhett o rick]

18. I hope you are right. nm

[sad sally]

12. There's a US commando team on standby - just in case.

Tensions between the U.S. and Iran are at a high point, as the Islamic Republic threatens to close off a vital waterway and two U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups sit in the seas off the Iranian coast. But across the Persian Gulf, the U.S. has a previously unacknowledged weapon in reserve: a new special operations team.

Danger Room has confirmed with the U.S. Special Operations Command that a new elite commando team is operating in the region. The primary, day-to-day mission of the team, known as Joint Special Operations Task Force-Gulf Cooperation Council, is to mentor military units belonging to the U.S.’ oil-rich Arab allies, who collectively are known as the Gulf Cooperation Council. Those Arab states consider Iran to be their primary foreign threat.

The task force provides “highly trained personnel that excel in uncertain environments,” Maj. Rob Bockholt, a spokesman for special-operations forces in the Mideast, tells Danger Room, and “seeks to confront irregular threats.” The U.S. military has not previously acknowledged the existence of the team, known as JSOTF-GCC for short.
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Even if JSOTF-GCC is primarily a training team, it represents another military option for the U.S. in the region during at a time of escalating rhetoric with Iran. The Iranians are threatening to close off the Strait of Hormuz, the sea lane through which a fifth of the world’s oil travels, as two U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups float nearby. And when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says the U.S. could reopen the waterway by force, there might be an elite commando team nearby to help do it.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/01/jsotf-gcc/?su

[tabatha]

16. This is just in case Israel does something stupid.

Obama has sent a delegation to Israel to strongly state that they are opposed to any action in Iran.

[Doctor_J]

24. And where was this idiot when his boss was preparing to attack Iraq?

Bad ideas don't get much worse than that one.

All Republican dispatches are partisan, not ideological. As soon as there is another Repuke in the WH, every single one of them will be in favor of attacking Iran. It is very discouraging that a member of DU would be quoting anyone from the Bush administration