Featured Post for 05/08-05/14 I wrote this to Mr. Obama after reading the following article. I guess we’ve got to keep trying.
Red Cross Confirms Dozens Dead in Afghan Air Strikes
Mr. Obama,
I do not understand what is going on. When you inherited the White House, did you also inherit the bubble that your predecessor lived in?
You campaigned for change. We the People, after eight years of Cheney/Bush flouting the Constitution, causing a million or more deaths in their endless search for oil, thought we might have a new broom in Washington that would sweep these people into the dustbin of history and reverse the draconian laws that were put in effect.
Instead, what do we see? On the home front, the billionaires get richer and the poor, the retired, the workers whose jobs have been outsourced are winding up living in the streets. There is more surveillance, more restrictions on our individual lives. Habeas corpus is still a corpse, NorthCom’s combat brigades are still getting intensive training on suppressing civilian unrest. Now you want to keep the Military Commissions for Gitmo because, apparently, the fear is that the civil courts might not allow hearsay evidence, and evidence obtained by torture into their courts, and that the attorneys might have the right to cross examine witnesses, or actually see the evidence!
Our endless wars, which we thought would finally end, are expanding. Iraq gets a change of occupiers from combat troops to “advisors.” Same troops, different name.
We are upping the killing in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Every time we bomb a village full of civilians on the off chance of killing what we term insurgents, we create still more Afghan and Pakistani patriots yearning for the end to occupation, as I hope we would if we were occupied. What we consider insurgents, they consider freedom fighters trying to rid their country of yet another foreign invader,
Look at the number of bases we have worldwide. We cannot spread ourselves over the earth like peanut butter on a slice of bread. Especially if the jar is getting moldy.
We have horrible problems here in the US to deal with, yet you sidestep any suggestion that those who committed unconstitutional actions such as violating the treaties which we have signed and which are therefore the Law of the Land (read the Constitution) against torture, indefinite imprisonment, and treatment of prisoners, should be tried and punished. These people were not ignorant, they knew what they were doing and that, if the United States ever became a Constitutional Republic again, tthey would face trial and punishment. According to you, they will not, but their victims, here and abroad, will continue to suffer.
We are still dealing ineffectively from the effects of Katrina, yet we can continue to allow misappropriation of funds and no-bid or fixed contracts with the big money contributors. Veterans, destroyed mentally or physically, and their families, are living in the streets. Runaway inflation and the depression are destroying the lives of retirees.
The Military Industrial Complex has billions and billions in war profits. Can’t you stop feeding them and start caring for We the People who elected you? So far, all that those of us below the rank of Congressman or CEO have seen is Bush Lite and Bush style lies.
Please! Show enough gumption to get rid of these old parasites and turn the country around. We the People will be glad to help. That’s what we elected you for!
Sincerely,
Steve and Adrienne Osborn
From the Editor: Please watch the following video – Ron Paul questioning Richard Holbrooke on war, empire and foreign policy
30 comments ↓
The faces change, but the crimes remain the same. More war, more mass murder, more crumbling empire. Great letter, Steve.
Frankly, I’m surprised at the level of surprise. Perhaps it was only us non-Americans that could see through the fog.
We’ve come full circle, as terrorists and insurgents are what the British considered us during our revolutionary war.
[...] about Steve Jobs as of May 8, 2009 Get Rid of These Old Parasites! – blog.populistamerica.com 05/08/2009 Featured Post for 05/08-05/14 I wrote this to Mr. Obama after [...]
Holbrook said Afghanistan and Pakistan is where the people are that attacked us and that’s why we need to do another Iraq massacre.
But if what Holbrook said is true, that the people who did 9/11 are in Pakistan and Afghanistan, then why did we invade Iraq?
When your life is threatened, you have the right to defend yourself. It is time to overthrow the power elite of the Fourth Reich (USA). The methods of doing this are within our grasp and we must proceed with all do haste!
The military must be removed, corporations must be unchartered and power must be restored to the people.
Our leaders are leading us to doom for their own personal benefits. We are becoming as helpless as the masses who were led to concentration camps during the holocaust. Is it no wonder that America is being called, “The Great Satan” by other countries?? If “we the people” do not unite to rid of the evils in our government policies, we will all suffer great consequences. Well written letter to Obama. Wish I could had added my name to it.
Obama promised us “smart governemnt”…In the long run it’s not “smart” to cave in to the defense contractors and military establishment. We should respond to “proven” or “provable” threats only.
No one with their eyes open should be surprised that Obama (who never represented himself as anything other than a centrist), would be maintaining the status quo of the American power structure. Obama is, in many ways, the perfect front man for the power elite – his rhetoric inspires and comforts the people while his policies support the puppet-masters of empire.
There is, however, a way to bring down the top of the pyramid – those millions of us on the bottom need only to stop holding it up. Create local self-sufficient communities, stop purchasing consumer “goods”, and stop paying federal taxes.
#8 Wallace – I think for the people who benefit from war and massive growth of power in the federal government (like Bush, Cheney, and all current and future presidents and their lobby friends), for them, this sure is a “smart government”!!
Good that veterans are still lending their voices to this war. The people will win. It is always a long fought war. Let us keep focused on victory. It will come when we don’t expect. If Obama had not proved to just one of them, I am sure your voice and similar voices would have rising. Let us keep on, one day, it will dawn on them that they can kill the body but not spirit – they can try, but cannot surpress the people’s will and self-expression. Kudos, Steve. You have spoken the minds of million across the world.
As a Vietnam Combat Veteran, I find it rather ironic that we are in Afghanistan. I’m reminded of the “Golden Triangle”. That is what American Soldiers, sailer’s and Air force enlisted men called it. I believe the officers also used that term. Having been involved in the communications between the U.S. and that region of the world, I learned that “Golden Triangle” stood for MONEY! BIG BIG MONEY! I already knew that the US Military had been in French Indochina since 1954 when the US Military evacuated the French. Why? To keep the region from becoming Communist? That was B.S. What we were really there for was $$$$$$$$$$$$ Billions of Dollars! I learned that many caskets supposedly carrying dead American Military Personel, actually carried drugs! They were made to weigh about the same and a human body but the body bags were full of drugs. Opium was funneled from Afghanistan to Vietnam and flown the the U.S. where the caskets were sorted out and the dead got buried while some high ranking people were getting rich!
The fact is, that the people of that region couldn’t tell the difference between any kind of government. They simply wanted to be left alone to grow their rice, raise their families in peace and would pay “The Man,” whomever what ever was demanded to leave them alone. Those are facts in a nutshell.
Why weren’t there any Iraq hijackers on 9/11 airplanes that crashed into the Twin Towers of NY City? Where was NORAD!? That airspace is supposed to be monitored by the US Air Force 24/7. Where were they, and why? I think I’ve good idea of what was REALLY going on!
Why haven’t we captured or killed Osama Bin Ladin? Because he’s a very convenient excuse for us to stay there! You tell me why! Why do we want to be in Opium Poppy country? What did we really want in Iraq and are still hoping to get it? Was it Oil or was it Water control, or region control or all three!? Think about it. The United States used to be keeping the world safe for Democracy. Another irony. The United States its self has never been a Democracy that’s why we plead or allegiance to “…The Republic for which it stands…”, and Bush Jr almost succeeded in making it a Kingdom. He must have thought a nice crown would look good on his head! My memoirs are secreted away in seven countries and will be published to the world after I die or disappear. It will be a blockbuster and any proceeds if there are any, will go to charities around the world.
With all due respect to Ron Paul as a person and one of the best representatives of we the people, he is not forcefull enough. Not lound enough, not vehement, not angry enough, not rightious enough, not focused on who the perpetrators are; not questioning their motives enough. One senator I read on the net was quoted as saying ( from my memory ) that at least 17 senators that he knew were socialist. The Nazi’s were the German Socialist Party. The Russians were the Union of Soviet Socialist. Lenin Said that “we can not have communism without ( first ) having socialism.” We have not only socialists in our government, but I would declare that all those who voted for the bale-out in which our Government would Own stock in the private companies or even be declared a Long-Term Liability are Communists because the one major differences between Socialism and Communism is that Communism owns the means of production. Those who are due the liabilities have power to dictate.
Charles Labianco
“correct my statement to “one of the major differences between Communism and Socialism is that in Communism, the Government Leaders own the means of production. With that they can dictate what should be produced and how. ( That would be the 2nd major difference implied by the first. )
Someone pointed out was if airplanes crashing into large structures could generate such an ideal collapse, why are demolition experts necessary any more? Shortly after 911, someone posted a site with many different large structures brought down by controlled demolition and many of them weren’t done as professionally nor as cleanly as the towers, so if the application of a single asymmetrical force is capable of generating a fully symmetrical result, I say we use remotely piloted transport aircraft to bring down buildings instead of explosives. If that is what really happened, then why hasn’t that technique been adopted?
I’ve read from a number of sources bin Laden died of some form of cancer and was buried around Tora Bora, where the site was blown apart by American artillery 2 or 3 years ago, which corresponds to the audio tapes coming out versus his favorite video messages.
Fire weathers rock, it doesn’t pulverize it and jet fuel does not burn hot enough to melt steel. Soften and warp but not melt. 90,000 tons of concrete was pulverized almost instantly in a manner described that had never happened before or since. Those buildings collapsed within 6 to 7 seconds. Without a horrendously fierce downslope wind, there was no way fire could have burned downward fast enough to do any damage to the building, let alone utterly destroy everything in its path. By its very nature, fire burns upward.
I don’t believe I have to tell anybody here we went to war under very false pretenses. There was lots of $$$$$$$$$$$ to be made by a select few. All the rest of us got shafted.
ffromor
, why are any of us surprised? History continues to repeat itself. Go back and refresh our knowledge of Vietnam. Beyond that our political system will not allow the President to do all things of his or our ideologies, and in spite of it all he is still a politician from a flawed system. At least we can hope that a few crumbs will fall from his table of humanity of deeper sense of social justice, of which there was never any hope the Bush administration. That was truly an evil regime that will leave a dark mark on our society. p.s what is wrong with these comment boxes?
clabianco,
While you’re quite right about Ron Paul’s lack of righteous indignation, you really need to go back to school to study political economy. The kind of ignorance that you profess is exactly why Americans are so easily bulldozed by neo-conmen like Bush.
Socialism is no more a stepping stone to Totalitarian Communism than marajuana use is to heroin addiction. The most prosperous, healthy and happy countries in the western world are all socialist.
The power brokers in our government who just mortgaged our grandchildrens’ future to the banksters are hardly socialists, they are the heart (if it can even be said to have one) of capitalism. And historically, there has been a thin line between democratic capitalism and fascism, which the Bushites brought us perilously close to and which Obama is doing nothing to avert. (Let’s not forget that the Bush fortune was made by supplying Nazi Germany, and American corporate capitalists came close to staging a fascist coup against FDR).
What we are witnessing, in fact, is the death throes of global corporate capitalism and its desperate attempt to grab as much national treasure as it can on its way out.
The only way we will be able to stop all the corruption that is going on in this nation is to take the power of money away from them and give to the people for there benefit. To learn more go to http://www.wealthmoney.org and wealth as money on same website.
For some reason, I flashed back to the old movie Teahouse of the August Moon. There was a scene when that old character actor who played the Colonel jumped, I think it was Glen Ford, that he had ripped off the money that was set aside for the Pentagon shaped school house and turned it into the Teahouse.
Ford said, and I paraphrase after this many years, “No Sir, every penny that has been made has been put into a bank account in Seattle. The money is used to finance projects to benefit the entire village and any surplus is given back to the villagers as equal shares.”
“That’s Communism!” exploded the Colonel.
Americans want someone to run their country, but fear anybody much smarter than themselves, as many tend to be intimidated by intelligence.
You’ve certainly got that right. Don’t forget the warning that fascism starts with getting rid of the intelligent.
Hi Robert Riversong,
Thanks for replying to my dialogue. I do not hold myself out to be a very knowledgeable person about the implied issues in my comment and in your reply. And I’m willing to learn from other men and women that define and explain their points of view, not simply present a statement, an ad-hominum ( against the man’s personality ) argument that a person is ignorant and that he should go back to study political economy. You have presented a challenge to my statements in a public forum. I will reply in my next communication in detail to your comments and by way of example I will define and explain my position what I alluded to.
Ignorance applies to a person who ignores knowledge, not to someone who does not have enough or who has incorrect knowledge. They are simply wrong and must be corrected. try not to be ignorant.
I thank you for replying to my comment and I will humbly reply to yours. It will take me a reasonable time to prepare my reply. I must check my definitions and facts and my inductions, deductions from experience in an attempt to understand your statements or in order to request that you explain things more clearly to me. I respect your desire to dialogue in a public forum such as this.
Looking forward to more dialogue.
A humble man.
Charles Labianco
Sadly, there is one aspect that is persistently overlooked. The reason that so many people in the world dislike America (but not necessarily, Americans) is that we are monotonously reminded that the President of the USA is also the leader of the “free” world, and yet we have no say in this, whatsoever.
Furthermore, many American networks, seen around the world via satellite, are often extremely insulting to, and about, other countries. Such negative comments are usually thinly disguised as a joke.
I don’t know that the aspect of “leader of the free world” is necessarily overlooked, it’s simply an obviously inaccurate and boastful line to BS! But what can we do about it? Who is in charge of our public image and advertisement? Would they even listen? It sounds good as a bite, but everyone knows the truth, they experience it all the time by picking up a newspaper or turning on the TV news, etc.
I’m reminded of a pub in Manila in the Philippines. “The Ugly American!” I made that my choice of pubs.
The reputation “leader of the free world” came from the Berlin Airlift, for which Andrei Cherney wrote an incredible book called “The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America’s Finest Hour.” I receive nothing from plugging this book, but if enough interest is shown, perhaps a movie could be made about the Airlift and how it affected the 1948 election and more people would be aware of that bit of American / German history, as nobody seems to have time to read a book but they all have time to watch a movie. That’s our microwave society for you: instant gratification isn’t soon enough! The Airlift stopped the Soviet advance through Europe at the division of East and West Berlin. He’s not only an incredible author, but an officer in the US Naval Reserve. This was when and where our reputation was derived, but unfortunately it has been squandered. As for the Ugly American, I probably fit the “Goofy Lookin’ American” much better.
Actually, my use of the word, “overlooked” was more concerned with the lack of consultation rather than with the assertion itself.
Of course, we all know that diplomats provide regular analyses, on their host countries, for their “head office” but past experience tells me that their analyses are not always objective (nor accurate).
The classic example HAS to be the British Amabassador to Saudi Arabia — in, I think, the 1940s, who famously reported that he “saw no great commercial benefit in the Saudi Arabian oil fields!”
Like many judges, these people do seem to originate from a different planet — or, at least somewhere unfettered by the realities of earth.
The title of this piece couldn’t be more appropriate. Reminds me of a great article by Sheldon Richman (one of my favorite writers) at FFF.org:
Government as Parasite
Frederic Bastiat pointed out, “The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else.” A corollary principle is: The state is the great parasite that sucks the lifeblood out of a society, oftentimes with the support of the citizens themselves.
OMG! It’s just a huge “Pyramid Scheme!” No wonder most people feel like their being crushed! The lower on the pyramid, the heavier the load. Wow, Dave, you’re a genius!
Yeah, it’s definitely a pyramid scheme. They make it quite clear with that image on our money!
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