chris-floyd.com — As we have stated here over & over: the "success" of the surge...the relative drop in the horrific death rate in the occupied land - has been due largely to the vicious ethnic cleansing sponsored & supported by American power. The American presence in Iraq began in murder...is sustained by murder ...and if it ever ends it will leave murder behind."
Nov 3, 2008 View in Crawl 4
grandmasheilaNov 4, 2008Submitter
Yeah it's about 10 minutes between shouts on this end. What a pain in the .....And thank you, yellowcake, your know how much it means. ;-)
halleburtonNov 4, 2008
I can't access the post being dugg. All I get is:jtablesession::Store FailedDB function failed with error number 1062Duplicate entry '1-' for key 2 SQL=INSERT INTO `jos_session` ( `session_id`,`time`,`username`,`gid`,`guest`,`client_id` ) VALUES ( '566cfa0c140f2fa0840ac7119b2705cc','1225812395','','0','1','0' )
Closed AccountNov 4, 2008
Chris' site is having a problem at the moment. Here's at least some of the original article.FTA: And so the great historical presidential campaign of 2008 is finally at an end. By every reasonable and legitimate measure, Barack Obama will be the winner. But of course "reasonable and legitimate measures" mean little when dealing with deliberately fomented chaos and chicanery of the American electoral process, the laughingstock of the rest of the world, whose people stand in slackjawed amazement as they watch and wait -- in dreadful impotence -- to see which hegemon will emerge from the stormcloud of filth, lies, ambition and money that howls around the campaign trail.It has been, as usual, a bizarre, even lunatic experience, completely untethered from reality, obsessed with trivia, gossip and spin, and emptied, again deliberately, of anything resembling substance. Vague hope is offered by one side, vague, wiggly fear by the other. "Change" is the universal mantra, but both sides have fully and unashamedly embraced all the fundamental tenets and practices of the current power structure: militarism, corporatism, authoritarianism. Both candidates enthusiastically support the so-called War on Terror and the so-called War on Drugs, with all of their horrendous violence and corruption. Both champion unrestricted surveillance on ordinary citizens, and draconian punishments for the millions incarcerated in cramped and increasingly privatized prisons, where the poor and luckless are abandoned to the depradations of gangs and the brutality of ill-paid, ill-trained guards. Both back the inexorable growth of the death penalty to cover an ever-wider array of offenses, even non-lethal crimes. Both support the so-called "bailout," the gargantuan redistribution of wealth from working people to the fraudulent rich.Where then is the promised "change"? A radical imperial faction might be replaced by one slightly more moderate in a few areas (although not in terms of the state's war machine, its global empire of bases and its commitment to geopolitical domination). This may result in a few differences here and there for many people (a not insignificant consideration for those affected, of course), but it does not constitute any kind of genuine "change" in the operations of power.
grandmasheilaNov 5, 2008Submitter
I'm not happy supporting the current uniparty system at all. The options are, as I see them,1) Don't vote. This is not possible, and is a dereliction of civic duty to me, which assures the worst of the worst will stay in power, IE the NeoCon Junta which has destroyed our country.2) Vote third party. This is in fact my inclination, were it not for the fact that, since no third party has sufficient backing, YET, to carry a presidential election, we have the effect of voting for the people I hate most, mentioned in option 1.3) Vote "not McCain". This does not please me, being perfectly aware that if Obama had not sold out to the plutocracy & the MIC, he would not be the candidate.Musing on all this, and with no hope at all of anybody's "better nature" coming forward after the election, I still voted Obama, because:1) There is no other hope at the moment of purging the Federal Bureaucracy of the incompetent drones currently infesting it, and destroying it.2) McCain will most certainly gut all social services for the people, as in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, school funding, etc. The suffering caused by this is simply incalculable, and totally unacceptable to me.3) He will also rape the people of any hope of affordable health-care, which he intends to "privatize", by either TAXING employer contributions as income to the employees, a real carom screwing there, or force people into overpriced private plans, which won't cover their real needs, and too many won't be able to afford.4) McCain is too corrupt, too senile, too elitist, too dishonorable, too utterly clueless, and too frail to be allowed the WH, with that odious bitch waiting in the wings to take over, another possibility too horrible to contemplate.So I see the times as too dire to vote my beliefs. This is a watershed for us, and we can't afford the risk of a McCain presidency. Obama will be drowned in the ocean of debt created by the junta, andthe financial/economic collapse will, I believe, throw a serious wrench into the Imperial DeathStar war machine. The nation needs to be dragged back from the failed and discredited policies of the past 8 years of predatory capitalism & Imperialism.But you have to start somewhere, with what you have, and unfortunately, this is all we have. That McCain will be the death of the nation as we know it, is a certainty, and that is what ultimately decided my vote.But I hope for better times, and the rise of 3rd, 4Th, 5Th parties, to start a real, representative electoral offering, and intend to work for that.I offer this, not as a justification, but to explain. I mean to offend no one here, because I grieve for us all, and the country, to see us reduced to such choices. My "hope" is not that Obama will change anything, but rather that a newly awakened electorate, which we are seeing right now, will work to change the corrupt system. My hope is our people, I guess.