Mendocino County Affairs

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From JIM HOULE
Redwood Valley

The County teeters on the edge of bankruptcy, yet our Board of Supervisors approaches serious budget cut-backs as if they were virgins considering a serious affair: they flirt with cost cutting notions, they talk these ideas into confusion, and then put off a decision for six months, knowing full well that our local economy is not likely to have some wonderful rebirth in the next year unless the price of pot miraculously soars like a phoenix to $10,000 a pound.

A few examples: At today’s Board of Virgins’ meeting (Dec 15), John McCowen moved to eliminate our two lobbyists in Washington. Dave Colfax, while admitting that the idea had merit, was concerned that McCowen had not been specific about what it was the lobbyists had failed to do in Washington. Supervisor Smith admitted that it was hard to measure their actual performance. McCowen’s motion was defeated 3 to 2. The Supes agreed to think about it again in six months. Next, an apparently sponsor-less proposal to increase the Clerk of the Board’s salary by 35% was removed from the Consent Calendar for further review. The Clerk had already promised to take voluntary time off for, oh yes – the next six months – to avoid overrunning her budget. While the clerk’s supervisor, CEO Mitchell, had placed this item on the Consent Calendar without making the requisite recommendation, he wiggled around quite nicely by saying that her current salary was “in line” with other counties.

We have many county employees that have been voluntarily working less than full time for six months or more to save the county money. If the county hasn’t yet collapsed due to work left undone during this time, then should we conclude that the county government was really over staffed? (I won’t hold my breath waiting for an answer – as to whether it has indeed collapsed – from Tom Mitchell.)

In Memory of Wayne Knight

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From JAMES HOULE
In Memory of WAYNE KNIGHT

The Heart Sutra

The Heart Sutra is chanted daily in Buddhists Monasteries in China, Japan, Tibet, Korea and right here in Mendocino County. Also known as the Great Prajna Paramita Sutra, the name refers to the intuitive wisdom that can be experienced by the mind that has gone over to the far shore. A sutra is not a prayer to a supreme being, for Buddhists do not experience a supreme being. Rather, a sutra is a discourse, a homage to how things are. This discourse concerns “heart-mind”, the indissoluble linkage between thinking and feeling, between mind and matter. Wayne Knight experienced this linkage and expressed it in his portraits of Cambodians. Please suffer with me for a moment as I try to explain the inexplicable.

The convergence between science and mysticism, between Eastern thought and Western pragmatism became apparent in the Post-Einsteinian revelations of Quantum Physics, which confirmed what the Mahayana Buddhists discovered about 350 CE. Matter was found to be essentially empty of materiality and subatomic particles were found to be packets of light, or of waves, without mass. The solid indestructible blocks of matter upon which our Newtonian/Cartesian science has comfortably rested all these years was badly shaken in the 1920s by Bell’s Theorem and Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. When looked at under an electron microscope, instead of particles of matter, physicists found nothing but a continuous dance of energy particles. The elementary particles were not independently existing entities but merely sets of relationships with no inherent separate existence. Nagarjuna, in 200 CE had already explained this: “Things derive their being and nature by mutual dependence and are nothing in themselves”.

Obama Trips Up On Al Qaeda

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From JIM HOULE
Redwood Valley

OUR GOAL IS TO DEFEAT AL-QAEDA
On Thursday, September 24, 2009 President Barack Obama vowed in a speech to the UN General Assembly “not to permit safe heaven for Al-Qaeda to launch attacks from Afghanistan. In confronting them, America will forge lasting partnerships to target terrorists, share intelligence, coordinate law enforcement, and protect our people. He declared his administration’s strong economic support to Pakistan, a front line ally in the fight against terrorism. We have set a clear and focused goal: to work with all members of this body to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat Al-Qaeda and its extremist allies’ a network that has killed thousands of people of many faiths and nations, and that plotted to blow up this very building”.

GENERAL MCCHRYSTAL: THERE’S NO AL-QAEDA IN AFGHANISTAN
Oddly enough, General Stanley McChrystal, who is in charge of US and NATO counter-insurgency efforts in Afghanistan directly contradicted the President’s findings in a speech on the 8th anniversary of 9/11 attacks: He said that: “I see no indication of any large Al Qaeda presence in Afghanistan”. The US currently has more than 47,000 troops on the ground and is building towards a total strength of 68,000 by year-end. All of these troops are engaged in battle with Taliban and Pashtoon tribal insurgency, none are fighting directly with Al Qaeda. Nevertheless, McChrystal, who seemed oblivious of having dismissed the President’s ostensible raison d’etre for the conflict, continued to defend the war, maintaining that it was winnable given increased effort and insisting that, while he had no evidence to back it up, he “strongly believes” our actions have prevented other terroris attacks.

All of this has left us a bit confused, so we went back to read the good General’s report to the Pentagon concerning the need for more troops to win the war. We expected that this would more clearly support the Administration’s objectives. While this report has not been made ‘public’ for fear of restricting Obama’s freedom to choose amongst various sources of advice, it was deliberately leaked to Bob Woodward, the highest profile investigative reporter in Washington. The leak was designed to gain maximum publicity and was snatched up by all the main stream media immediately. You might think that leaking a report the President had not seen would result in General McChrystal’s immediate dismissal or at least a rebuke. But the Pentagon had apparently reviewed and approved the leak and McChrystal is planning to testify about it before Congress quite soon.

THE PURLOINED LETTER
So what did this ‘purloined’ report actually say about increasing our forces and gaining victory in Afghanistan? “Greater resources will not be sufficient to achieve success, but will enable implementation of the ‘new’ strategy. Conversely inadequate resources will likely result in failure. However, without a strategy the mission should not be resourced.”

Ukiah Mendocino: Is The Swine Flu Pandemic A Hoax?

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From JIM HOULE
Redwood Valley

The H1N1 pandemic seems to have taken on a life of its own – while the actual evidence of a serious and life-threatening epidemic has not supported the hysteria we hear in the main stream media. The news media and the World Health Organization have continued to pump out stories suggesting that we are just a few months away from Armageddon – and the mass inoculation of just about everyone with a still-untested vaccine is the only solution. Mark Horton, director of the California Dept. of Public Health announced that “millions of Californians, possibly one in four, may be affected by the coming H1V1 ’swine flu’ virus”. Dr. Marvin Trotter, Mendocino County’s public heath officer “fears ‘a perfect storm’ scenario could lead to the rapid and potentially deadly spread of what the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) calls a ‘novel virus’. Ukiah Daily Journal 8-30-09. The virus seems to particularly attack the lung tissue and this can lead to viral pneumonia. The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology warned that “swine flu poses a serious threat: half the population could come down with the strain and 90,000 could die this season.” US Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sibelius warns that “this is not the flu we’re used to”. As if to speed up their production, Sibelius has signed a document specifically granting pharmaceutical manufacturers immunity from prosecution for death or injury from the vaccine.

THE EVIDENCE SO FAR

Yet, the evidence collected to date seems to suggest that H1N1 is a relatively mild flu, similar to the common influenza we have dealt with for decades and is in fact practically indistinguishable from it.

The Great Game

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From JIM HOULE
Redwood Valley

July 30, 2009 Ukiah Valley, Mendocino, North California

The Editor of Obama-Watch.US, Jim Houle, spent three weeks in June and July traveling across Central Asia along the legendary Silk Road visiting Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and China’s Xinjiang Province where the Uighur (wee-gur) people predominate. These Turkic-speaking people have been the “Stopper in the Bottle” between Europe, Russia, China and India for over a thousand years. The Gateway to Elsewhere, it has seldom, at least until now, been desired for its own value but was seen as a portal to the riches of India for the Russians and to the markets of Europe for the Indians and Afghanis. In the 20th century, with the discovery of oil and gas around the Caspian Sea, the collapse of the Soviet Hegemony, the withering away of British majesty, and the United States’ global domination of world energy resources, all has changed – or has it changed at all? Perhaps the “Great Game” by Peter Hopkirk, that amazing story of the 19th century battle over these remote kingdoms stumbles on, with Putin replacing the Czar and Obama taking Queen Victoria’s role.

Obama sees Central Asia as an important element in his program to expand ‘Full Spectrum Dominance’, assure the supply of oil and gas, and the continued sustenance of the Dollar as the world reserve currency. Petroleum (oil and gas) has since 1971 replaced gold as backing for the dollar and our huge military machine has taken on the role of enforcer. Should people decide to pay for their oil barrels with some other moolah, or a ‘market basket’ of currencies, the value of the dollar would drop like a stone. Our indebtedness would soon crowd us off the world stage. We could no longer print oil-soaked dollars

Obama Plays Cairo

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From JIM HOULE
Redwood Valley

In this Eighteenth Edition, we review the Obama speech in Cairo, the Palestinian impasse, and how he balances his message of friendship with Moslems world wide alongside his armed attacks in Afghanistan and support for the Pakistan’s army’s assault upon the Taliban in the Swat Valley.

The man’s performances are captivating to us all. We are proud of a President so knowledgeable of Moslem history and accomplishments, who can speak comfortably of common aspirations, while skipping deftly past lethal Drone attacks on wedding parties in small mountain villages, and yet who somehow keeps our hopes alive while moving us towards more war and ever greater hypocrisy.

The Cairo speech was directed not to any one country but addressed the entire Islamic Nation, most of whom are intensely wary of American motives and of our capacity for change, while incredibly fond of our way of life. Stratfor suggests 6/03/09 that: “the Moslem masses are in for a disappointment . . . but this will not pose much of a problem for Obama. The fond feelings of the Moslem world might be nice to claim but ultimately he does not need their support. In the end, it will be the American people, not the rest of the world, who will issue the final referendum on his performance as President.”

GAZA WILL NOT DIE
It is 139 days since January 19th, when Israel stopped the wanton killing of Gazans, so as not to “rain upon the start of Obama’s Reign” the following day. John Ging, director of operations for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), told a Code Pink delegation to Gaza last month that “billions in aid had been promised in the wake of Israel’s massacre, but so far nothing had arrived”. Code Pink reporters added: “Make no mistake about it: the blockade, directly enforced by Israel and Egypt but conspired in by their superpower patron in Washington, is a continuing act of war against an entire civilian population of 1.5 million, a form of collective punishment and a crime against humanity.” Roane Carey, The Nation 6/02/09.

Building materials that would allow Gazans to rebuild are forbidden, not one bag of cement, not one 2 by 4. Netanyahu

Will Israel Become an Apartheid State?

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From JIM HOULE

May 21, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California

The semi-annual Israeli trek to the Oval Office took place this week and was a wonderful success – nothing changed, no one moved, and all is as deranged as ever. Bibi Netanyahu, with a most diverse Cabinet and an almost-fascist Foreign Minister, is said to have arrived hoping to get “fundamental redefinitions of the regional dynamic”, Stratfor 18 May – George Friedman, such as a re-examination of the ‘two-state solution’ and a “finite time frame for talks with Iran, after which unspecified but ominous-sounding actions are to be taken”.

With Obama up to his ears in torture, the AfPak War, and a broken economy, Netanyahu’s expectations seem quite demanding. Exactly why Obama agreed to the visit at this time is strange in itself, but Bibi is new at the job, and he needs to demonstrate his “special US relationship” in front of constituents. Israel has lost a lot of friends lately after their murderous treatment of the Gazans. Recent figures show emigration now outpacing immigration while between 700,000 and 1 million citizens live outside of Israel proper. A 2007 poll showed only 69% wanted to stay in the country and this included half of all young people. These figures are a bad omen for Israel” says John Mearsheimer in the American Conservative 5/15/09.

“Progress towards a two-state solution”, the assumed rationale for all talks between Palestinians and Israelis for years now, “is a total chimera” in the view of George Friedman in Stratfor 5/18/09. “It is a fiction that serves US purposes”: Geographically it is impossible to implement and control. Israel will never agree to return to the 1967 Truce Lines upon which the two-state plan is based. Furthermore, the major Arab powers are not supportive: The Jordanian royal family does not want to see Fatah in charge of a new Palestinian State on the West Bank, expecting that they would quickly overthrow the Hashemites that tried to annihilate them way back in Black September, 1970. President Mubarrak of Egypt views Hamas as a descendant of the damned Moslem Brotherhood that he has tried to eliminate for 20 years. Certainly the Saudis have no particular interest in according Palestinians any power or voice. So, the gentleman’s agreement has been to make comforting noises about Palestinian rights while being careful not to achieve anything much beyond food handouts and periodic payoffs to political leaders.

“The various Israeli-Palestinian peace processes have thus served US and Arab interests quite well: they provide the illusion of activity with high-level visits breathlessly reported in the media, succeeded by talks and concessions – - all followed by stalemate and new rounds of violence, thus beginning the cycle all over again”. George Friedman Stratfor 5/18/09.

The Israeli prime minister is now asking that the various Arab states become directly involved in a conference wherein they would be forced to reveal publicly their very different public and private positions on Palestinian statehood and their lack of any real interest in pressuring the US to demand a viable two-state arrangement with Israel and a return to the 1967 borders.

Arbusto Negro and the AfPak War

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From JIM HOULE

May 11, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California

Many Americans voted for Obama because he promised to end the war in Iraq. He promised to remove our troops in 18 months but he never said “all the troops”.

Obama seems to be slipping out of any commitment for withdrawal anytime soon since the pressure is off: fewer US troops are being killed in Iraq, no US reporters are stationed there, and America has just lost interest now that it has the loss of jobs and mortgages to worry about. He needs a new focus for our “war against terror”.

Why a new focus you ask? Because us taxpayers will not continue to see 50% of our federal budget spent for war in a time of economic depression unless someone can keep convincing us that there’s a really serious threat out there to our comfortable lifestyle. So, he must demonstrate that America defends the New World Order, maintains the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, keeps the oil flowing, prevents any serious challenge to our global hegemony, and delivers us from terrorists.

Afghanistan was the obvious choice for a new theater of war. With a mere blink of the eye, the news purveyors inside the Pentagon and the editors of these ‘insider’ stories at the major media outlets shifted gears from the Iraq conflict while continuing to emphasize the key ingredients: the need to defeat Islamic fundamentalism, to kill Al Qaeda terrorists, and to build democratic institutions. Same old story but this time it’s in Afghanistan. However, when Obama looked around Kabul, he realized he’d have a hard time selling it on the Evening News Shows since those Afghanis had:

No WMDs
No threat to our Homeland
No oil resources to protect
No Iranian fundamentalists across the border
No turbaned terrorist faces to showcase
No easily defined battle lines and no measure of military success
No organized military to maintain law and order on our behalf

Our hand-tailored President Hamid Karzai just hopped a flight to Washington for a “Trilateral” conference with Obama and President Zardari of Pakistan. Patrick Cockburn commented in Counterpunch 5/06/09 that if ”the President’s motorcade had headed for the southern outskirts of Kabul, he would have soon experienced the limits of his government’s authority. It ends at a beleaguered police post within a few minutes drive of the capital. Drivers heading for the southern provinces nervously check their pockets to make sure they are carrying no documents linking them to the government. They do so because they know they will soon be stopped and their identities checked by black turbaned Taliban fighters who sometimes take the traveler’s cell phone and redial numbers recently called. If a call is answered by a government ministry, or even worse, by a foreigner, then the phone’s owner may be executed on the spot”.

The Taliban is hard to define and often hard to admire but it has never been the caricature that Fox and CNN developed. Member of Parliament Daoud Sultanzoy of Ghazni Province told Cockburn that: “Security has not deteriorated because of what the Taliban has done, but because people feel the government is unjust. It is seen as the enemy of the people, and because there is no constitutional alternative to it, the Taliban gain”.

Support for the Taliban is not very high, but it has increased since 2006 when their rebellion effectively resumed with aid for Pakistan’s powerful military intelligence agency, the ISI – Inter Services Intelligence – which supports the Taliban in Afghanistan and allows them refuge in the Pakistani mountains. ISI advises them not to fight to the end but to wait until the US loses interest in Afghanistan. “A withdrawal of Pakistani support and a denial of safe refuge would be a crippling blow to the Taliban but is not likely to happen. President Zardari may want to do it, but policy on the Taliban is decided by the Pakistani military” which continues to have little stomach for fighting fellow Moslems. Counterpunch 5/07/09.

Such Torturous Twisting and Turning

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From JIM HOULE

April 24, 2009 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California

In the past 6 days, Obama has shown us much about his political style and courage as our President. Intent upon opening up the records concerning torture, and after a Freedom of Information suit that forced his hand, he allowed four legal memos to be published Thursday 4/16/09. They provided legal cover for torture of political prisoners during the Bush years. He was immediately accused by four former Directors of the CIA of jeopardizing national security and aiding the terrorists; then he was challenged by Dick Cheney to tell the good results of torture; next, roundly condemned in a Wall Street Journal editorial; and finally pilloried by a plethora of patriotic Republicans. Obama’s panicky responses to these attacks reveal much about what we can expect during the future Battles of Barack: ringing words, cautiousness when attacked, signals that he’ll compromise, a very watered down piece of legislation, and then a nice closing speech.

“The Obama administration is caught in a devastating political contradiction” reports Patrick Martin, WSWS.org 4/20/09. “Legal documents drafted by the US Department of Justice in 2002 and 2005, and released by Obama, clearly establish that acts of torture were authorized and justified by the highest levels of the Bush administration. Yet, the President said on 4/16/09: “This is a time for reflection, not retribution”. He asked that we “put the pain behind us, and right our course in concert with our core values and move forward with confidence.” Keith Olbermann objected immediately on MSNBC 4/16/09: “This country has never ‘moved forward with confidence’ without first cleansing itself of its mistaken past.” To ignore our past may very well keep the haunting images of Abu Ghraib alive in peoples minds, and allow torturers to assume that the lack of prosecution indicates that their actions were indeed justified. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel made it even clearer on Sunday 4/19/09 on the ABC News program ‘This Week with George Stephanopoulos’ that Obama’s opposition to any prosecution extends not only to CIA agents who directly participated in torture but also to all the top officials of the Bush administration who authorized and justified the policy. This caused shock waves.

WHO’S COVERING UP FOR WHOM?
The United Nations special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak immediately responded that:”This directly implicates the current administration in the cover-up of crimes carried out by its predecessor and as such, places the White House decision in direct violation of international law”. In an interview with the Austrian newspaper Der Standard on 4/18/09, Nowak pointed out that the UN Convention Against Torture “requires the prosecution of those who engage in actions like waterboarding that are universally regarded as torture. The United States, a signatory to the UN convention against torture, is committed to conducting criminal investigations of torture and to bringing all persons against whom there is sound evidence to court. The fact that you carried out an order doesn’t relieve you of your responsibility”. Nowak, an Austrian law professor, has previously urged the Obama administration to bring charges against George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld for torture and abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. He said the UN was in possession of documents that proved Rumsfeld gave orders for the torture of the prisoners and that the abuse was not the result of a handful of rank-and-file soldiers acting on their own.

Confuse and Conquer: Bankers to the Barricades!

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From JIM HOULE

Apr 16, 2009, Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California

The trouble with the original Hank Paulson TARP plan last fall that handed $700 billion to the biggest banks in compensation for their bad judgment was that it was too transparent. By the time we got to the Christmas holidays, everyone had figured it out and was grumbling.

Paulson spooned out the bailouts over a four month period after warning Congress that the world would end if they didn’t give Hank the money by the weekend. Some in Congress finally began to look at what they had approved, once they noticed that the public was beginning to suspect a con job. Obama, a far wiser politician, has taken steps to avoid these errors in his approach to our economy’s continuing collapse.

First he bribed us with a $787 billion dollar economic stimulus program designed to ease our pain, protect the unemployed, and give the states huge sums to hand out more or less as they wished. Second, he directed his new Treasury Secretary, the bright and shiny penny, Timothy Geithner, to fashion a series of second phase bank bailout programs that would be far more opaque than Paulson’s, and which would be distributed quickly, in very large tranches (a phony French financial phrase meaning Gobs of Cash), and for the most part outside Congress’ purview. That should take care of those grumbling voters.

Now Geithner has encountered a sea of troubles with his PPIP, the Public-Private Partnership Program. The idea was to show that private sector funds could indeed form a partnership with us taxpayers to soak up the troubled assets resulting from the collapse of the housing market, the financial derivatives trading, the credit default swaps and the like. Geithner has been working feverishly on a new strategy since February, but has yet to announce his definitive attack plan. We will examine Geithner’s various proposals in a minute. But first, let’s try to understand one basic question:

Obama’s Trojan Horse at the Gates of Detroit

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From Jim Houle

4/4/09 Ukiah, Mendocino County, North California

An auto worker said this week : “My opinion of him at first was that he was going to stick up for us, but there has been an abrupt change in attitude towards workers since taking office. I tried and tried to find something about that man that I liked but I couldn’t.” “Obama: I am looking at you, but there is something else underneath. You are not what you appear to be. Its like you were a Trojan horse”. WSWS 4/01/09

Obama complains that cost cutting programs have not gone far enough. Chrysler has to merge with Fiat or go bankrupt, he demands. If GM doesn’t fundamentally restructure in the next 60 days the government will throw it into bankruptcy. He emphasized his consternation by demanding the immediate resignation of their CEO. The main stream media enthusiastically praised Obama’s insistence that auto workers accept job cutbacks and salary reductions in order to return the US auto industry to profitability. Everyone has now piled on including the New York Times, the Financial Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. “It is important to hold UAW accountable and cut legacy liabilities” (previously agreed-upon retirement packages) said the Financial Times. The Post said: “It was important that the president did not flinch in demanding even deeper concessions from workers”. In distinct contrast to all of this, Larry Summers intoned on Meet the Press that the government could not force AIG to withhold bonuses because contracts can’t be broken. Apparently if you shower when you come home from work on the assembly line, your contract does not give the protection that those who shower before heading to a desk job in Wall Street receive.

Obama says the auto manufacturers must remake themselves with ‘fundamental restructuring’ but he doesn’t want the government to run the industry Counterpunch 4/1/09. GM management has not engineered any fundamental change in it business plan in the past 20 years. If he wants real change, Obama will have to install a management team committed to producing an electric car with a reasonable price tag, rather than the $40,000 ‘Volt’ they intend to put out in 2011. The auto industry task force set up by Obama on Feb. 28th consists of cabinet secretaries and senior advisors to the White House. Not one member has experience in the auto industry.

The hype is spilling over from south of the border

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From Jim Houle

3/20/09 Ukiah, North California

Since Sunday March 15th we have been hit with one of those Talk Show Tsunamis that always leave us trying to sniff out the Washington hype from the real goods. What are they saying?

- Mexico is losing control of its cities to drug gangs and could collapse.
- Mexico is close to becoming a failed state.
- 2000 weapons each day are shipped into Mexico from the wide-open gun dealers in the US.
- Drug syndicate criminals are infiltrating the US.
- This situation is our top priority: Homeland Security Czar Napolitano.
- Its a serious problem: Secretary of Defense Gates.
- US Embassy in Mexico City tries to dampen it down: “The US had no intention of sending troops into Mexico”.
- DEA’s top intelligence official Antony Placido believes: “Calderon is making important strides against the cartels. The violence we see is actually a signpost of success.”
- Obama says he’s considering putting troops on the border.
- Chief of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mullen says he is willing to supply unmanned drones and helicopters to chase down the Mexican drug mafia.
- Bay Buchanon (Pat’s lethal sister) says Calderon and his government are down for the count. Without a US rescue operation Mexico will soon become a narco-state.
- Sen Joe Lieberman says he’s: “looking into potential implications of increased terrorist activity”. (Does he mean the increased activity is potential or that the implications he foresees are still potential? In other words that they don’t even exist at this point in time.)

The current hype leaves one to ask “Qui Bono” – who benefits from this sudden tsunmai? The parroting of this story in almost identical language in all of our remaining newspapers coast to coast and on the major TV news broadcasts suggests the dead hand of the Pentagon’s War Justification Unit. We know them only too well from the buildup to Iraq. The stationing of a sizable US military force on the Mexican border has not happened since 1914 when we dispatched 11,000 troops across the border and occupied Veracruz. The Mexicans rose up in revolt against this and the entire power structure was toppled in the 1920’s . It took another half century for the wealthy land-owners to regain the full hegemony they and their northern partners now enjoy over the Mexican economy.

Every idea considered except for Single Payer Health Care

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From Jim Houle

3/12/09 Ukiah, North California

At last Thursday’s Health Care Forum, President Obama promised that “every voice will be heard, every idea considered and every option must be on the table”. But before the forum could even begin, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs explained, in reference to Single Payer Universal Health Care, that: “The President doesn’t believe that’s the best way to achieve the goal of cutting costs and increasing access”. No supporters of single payer were invited but at the last moment, Congressman John Conyers, single-payer’s leading advocate in Congress, was allowed to attend. Amy Goodman on Democracy Now 3/06/09 reported that single payer advocates had been largely silenced in the media. As media attention focused on the health care issue in early March, no advocates of a single payer health care plan were heard on any mainstream TV network and very few in the print media.

What is ‘Single Payer Universal Health Care’? It provides that all citizens will have their medical expenses paid for by the Federal Government (the single payer). There will be no insurance company involvement whatsoever. It will function much as the Medicare system, which pays all hospital costs for those over 65, has operated for the past 43 years.

What is Obama’s Alternative ‘Universal Heath Program’?: This program, still being fabricated in the White House, requires all who can afford it to purchase private health insurance and has the Federal Government pay for the insurance policies of those who cannot afford to pay themselves. The health care industry would continue to operate under the management of the private insurance industry, much as it does now, as a for-profit business.

How did this happen? Luke Mitchell in the Feb. 2009 issue of Harpers Magazine reports that “A single payer system would take a lot of money out of the private insurance system”. It’s also something that a lot of people in Washington understand as ideologically threatening, that is to say, they equate a single-payer system with what they call socialized medicine.” “There’s clearly a massive resistance to single-payer on the Hill.” Mitchell continues: “Obama himself said he favored a single-payer health plan in 2003 and has repeatedly said this was the best approach but there are a lot of built-in players to be dealt with. The ‘Universal Health Programs’ we are seeing an offer that basically acts to bribe those middlemen, the private health care insurers, into not complaining too much. It requires you to buy private insurance and if you can’t afford it, the government will fund you. So it’s not a market system exactly; its essentially government-funded private insurance. And the reason normal people might find it preferable is that they have a preference for what they think of as ‘market solutions’. They think these market solutions are just more efficient.”

Yet, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that administration consumes 31.0 percent of U.S. health spending under our privatized health care, double the proportion of Canada national health care plan (16.7 %). Average overhead among private U.S. insurers was 11.7 %, compared with 1.3 % for Canada’s single-payer system and 3.6 % for the US Medicare system run by the federal government and which pays hospital costs for all over age 65.

The Iraqi Pullout Hoax

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2/28/09 Ukiah, Northern California

From Jim Houle

The New York Times suggests that Obama has made a statesmanlike compromise between his campaign pledge to “get out of Iraq in 16 months” and the Pentagon Brass pushing for 23 months: he split the difference at 19 months (September 2010). Most Americans had thought on Election Day that this meant all troops would leave Iraq but we have been disabused of this naïve notion. America will continue to have “a residual force” stationed at the four large desert bases (often referred to as crusader castles) for an undefined number of years.

This “continuing presence” after August 2010 has been called Advisory Training Brigades. Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell conceded on Feb. 24th that some would continue to “conduct combat operations,” and Iraq would still be considered a war zone. The rest would be what he described as “enablers.” The issue is why will we need them there? We can only conclude that Obama has not let go of what had been the over-riding justification for the invasion of Iraq back in 2003: to dominate the region militarily. The objective was then and continues to be: to control Iraq’s oil resources, to assure the continued security of the corrupt medieval monarchies in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and to utilize the Persian Gulf as our private lake. The four crusader fortifications we have built with their huge airfields and weapons stockpiles can serve as a launching pad for any bombing raids found necessary in future years to keep in line those ‘Seven Stans” of Central Asia: Kazakh, Uzbek, Tajik, Turkomen, Kirghiz, Afghani and Pakistani along with those unreliable Persians and any Palestinians that might acquire a modern weapon. It’s all part of the unworkable and unaffordable program called “full spectrum global dominance” back at the Pentagon and that has already run us near to full spectrum bankruptcy. The administration intends to call those remaining troops a “transition force” – apparently to guard us as we move to a Pax-Obama future. None of the Iraqi political parties support any continued US presence after the year 2011, as had been agreed during the Bush administration.

Even House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is a bit confused: “I don’t know what the justification is for 50,000,” she said on MSNBC February 25th. “I would think a third of that, maybe 20,000, a little more than a third, 15,000 or 20,000.” As of February 26th, Obama’s people are putting the size of the residual force at 35 to 50,000. Obama just budgeted $130 billion to fund the wars costs for Iraq and Afghanistan for the fiscal year starting June 2009. Pentagon Spokesman Geoff Morrell has now further parsed his words: “while Iraq would remains a war zone, most of these remaining forces would not do anything that resembles fighting. But just because these troops would carry a sidearm, as all U.S. troops do in theater, that should not be confused with them having a combat mission”. What is this? Will two mile long runways be defended by residual forces with sidearms?

A Captive Obama

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From Jim Houle
Obama-Watch

2/23/09 Ukiah, Northern California The military holds Obama captive to its strategy for maintaining US security and continuing the supposed war on terrorism. After Bush Administration sold Congress and much of the American public for 8 years on the necessity of preventing another 9/11, Obama now finds it impossible to change the paradigm, declare the war over, cut our defense budget in the face of national bankruptcy, and withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan without being immediately accused of leaving America at risk. Further, the pressure upon him by Republicans and some Democratic lawmakers makes it extremely difficult to pass truly progressive legislation that does not have the approval of those who finance these law-makers. These financiers include the war-machinery manufacturers, the mass media and the financial community. They have everything at stake in this economy that spends 50% of tax revenues on making war. My God, what would happen if peace broke out? Where will we sell our cluster bombs?

Thus Obama can at best withdraw slowly and carefully from Iraq and then only if he can guarantee the war machine that it will still be able to bomb anywhere at will in the Middle East from secure bases or with conscienceless drones. Should he make any moves that threaten the “existing world order” he will confront the type of blockage he just encountered in the US Senate where Republicans and even some Democrats whittled away at his economic stimulus plan, not because they had real alternatives to offer, but merely to show they were still around and had muscle.

OUR INTEL ADMIRAL DISCOVERS ECONOMICS
Retired Admiral Dennis Blair, our new director of national intelligence, warned the Senate Committee on Intelligence Feb. 12th that the deepening world capitalist crisis posed the paramount threat to US national security and warned that its continuation could trigger a return to the “violent extremism” of the 1920s and 1930s. This frank appraisal, contained in the “annual threat assessment” on behalf of 16 separate US intelligence agencies, represented a striking departure from earlier years, in which a supposedly ubiquitous threat from Al Qaeda terrorism and the two wars launched under the Bush administration topped the list of concerns. Reported by Bill Van Auken Global Research, February 14, 2009. Admiral Blair declared: “The primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications. The crisis has been ongoing for over a year, and economists are divided over whether and when we could hit bottom. Some even fear that the recession could further deepen and reach the level of the Great Depression. Of course, all of us recall the dramatic political consequences wrought by the economic turmoil of the 1920s and 1930s in Europe, the instability, and high levels of violent extremism.”

Is this a change (of) team we can believe in? (Updated)

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From Jim Houle
Obama-Watch.us

Ukiah, California 02/13/09
Dave Lindorff, reporter for Salon, the Nation and Businessweek,/ writes: ”Just two weeks after his historic inauguration ceremony, Obama’s presidency is lurching towards failure, and not because three of his administration picks have been found to be tax cheats, but because nearly all of his administration picks are corporate whores and shills”. Lets look at the list:

William Lynn: A former Raytheon Co. lobbyist, confirmed today as deputy secretary of defense, (the department’s chief operating officer – which includes overseeing acquisitions). He has agreed to sell his stock in the military contractor but will not be forced to step back from decisions related to Ratheon, the Defense Department said Friday. Instead, Obama wrote Lynn a special permission slip to exempt him the new revolving door ban. Allowing Lynn to do business with his former employer makes a mockery of Obama’s new ethics rules.

Tom Daschle: Nominated as Secretary of H&HS – dropped out after acknowledging that he had belatedly paid more than $128,000 in taxes owed to the federal government.

Nancy Killefer: Intended to become the government’s first “chief performance officer”, bowed out, after admitting she never paid payroll taxes for her household employee.

Timothy Geithner: a key official of the Bush years, has now been confirmed at Secretary of the Treasury, although he admits not having paid the Social Security and Health Care taxes he owed to the US Treasury., while working at the IMF. He had avoided paying them, despite his signed acknowledgement that he owed these taxes and hid behind the 3 year statue of limitations, thus had saved himself $41,000. He only paid up after his nomination was confirmed. And this guy will supervise the IRS?

Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH) dropped out after having accepted the job of Commerce Secretary. A deeply conservative man, he is opposed to the very existence of the Commerce Department he will head. To top it off, Obama had worked out a deal to have the Democratic governor of New Hampshire fill Gregg’s vacated Senate seat with a Republican appointee, thereby forfeiting the right to add a Democrat to the Senate and eliminate any chance of Republican filibusters. Gregg explained that he didn’t like Obama’s economic stimulus program. It sounds like his ego got ahead of his ability to keep current on the news.

Tom Vilsack as Secretary of Agriculture: A Strong supporter of Monsanto’s genetically-engineered crops and of unsustainable ethanol manufacture from corn and soy beans.

Senator (D-Co) Ken Salazar, Obama’s choice for Secretary of Interior: a loyal servant of the big ranching, and mining interests. Energy stocks climbed over 10% on expectations that his taking charge of Interior would assure continued opening up of federal lands for minerals exploitation”. WSW.org 12/18/08. However, on February 10th, he surprised us by extending the review period for oil and gas leases in western states by 6 months. Should we wait and see if this leopard changes his spots?

Arne Duncan (currently CEO for the Chicago Public School System) will become Education Secretary. He is seen as a strong supporter of the “No Child Left Behind” initiative of the Bush administration.

Dr. Steven Chu has headed the Lawrence Berkeley Labs these past 4 years and is a scientist, not a businessman. His lifelong support for the nuclear power industry is why he’ll be DOE Secretary.
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Keep reading Obama-Watch.us Eighth Edition→

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[Update -DS]

See also Obama and Liberals: A counter-productive relationship by Glenn Greenwald, Salon→

and An Open Letter To President Obama About Republicans (From a Former Republican)→

and The obstructionists dilemma at Daily Kos→

and They Sure Showed That Obama by Frank Rich, NYT→

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Guiding the Ship of State

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From Jim Houle
Redwood Valley

Amongst all the euphoria about our entering the Obama Era, I find the sardonic words of Alexander Cockburn somehow appropriate:

Successfully Guiding The Ship Of State During Its Sunset Cruise

Alexander Cockburn writes in Counterpunch 1/17/09 that/: “I’ve always been a fan of George Bush, on the simple grounds that the American empire needs taking down several notches and George Jr has been the right man for the job. On Bush’s Jr’s fitful watch Latin America edged nervously out of Uncle Sam’s shadow. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales of Bolivia boldly assert their independence and thumb their noses at Uncle Sam. Twenty years earlier the ’strong leadership’ craved by Americans of all political stripes would have seen Chavez and Morales briskly toppled by the CIA and their local right-wing allies.”

“Barely a month went by in Bush Jr’s second term but that some liberal or left pundit would predict a US attack on Iran. It turns out that the Israeli high command made numerous requests for clearance for its planes to overfly Iraq on their way to Iran, but were adamantly nixed by George Jr. “

“Jr’s greatest single triumph in reducing America’s standing was his insistence that the assembly elections in Iraq go forward as planned, in December of 2005. Many seasoned counselors advised Bush to suspend the elections he’d pledged because they would lead to a majority Shi’ite government. Nevertheless, the 43rd president obstinately rejected these counsels, and the elections resulted in a mortal blow to U.S. objectives in Iraq and in the entire region.”

“Somewhere in late 2003, blaming everything on Bush became a national pastime and alibi. He took the hit for fifty years of venal failure by the city fathers of New Orleans and the legislators of Louisiana to protect their city. He’s even had to shoulder the blame for the Wall Street meltdown and the sub-prime crisis, for which Congressional legislators and overseers can far more justly be held responsible.”

“Blessed blunder dogged his every step: He made so half hearted an effort to ‘reform’ Social Security – the last defense of older Americans – that Wall Street, the instigator of the ‘reform’, remembered with profound nostalgia that Bill Clinton was well on his way to destroying Social Security until the Lewinsky scandal forced him to abort the mission. Bush passed his final White House years in morose seclusion, despised by all, obeyed by none – a welcome rebuke to the concept of ‘unitary power’ and an omnipotent executive.”

“Now Obama proclaims his mission of renewing America, always a sinister prospect. We’re heading back into the high country of moral uplift, and dispiriting talk of America’s ‘mission’.”
~
This is an excerpt from Obama-Watch.us Sixth Edition now available on the Internet:

www.OBAMA-WATCH.US→
~~
Also see The Obameter→

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Watching the torching of Gaza

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From Jim Houle
Redwood Valley

As I watch the Israeli onslaught in Gaza, I must ask who really controls American Middle East policy. Our strategic interests in the region are clear:

1st: We have much to gain through peaceful relations with the oil producing nations of the Middle East. Israel produces no oil or gas.
2nd : The major petroleum producers in the Arab nations buy our shaky treasury bills and keep much of their cash in our bank vaults. Israel by contrast receives $3 billion per year in economic aid to keep their economy afloat and another $3 billion to keep their military machine well oiled.
3th : We supply the F-16 jets, the anti personnel mines, and the missile systems Israel employs to keep their neighbors at bay.
4th : Without America’s weapons and money, Israel would have had to come to a lasting peace with its neighbors after the 1967 War, in accord with UN Resolutions.

So, do the majority of Americans feel we have some sort of obligation to support Israel in their battles with the Hamas, their continual suppression of the Palestinians in the West Bank, and with the Hezbullah in Lebanon? Is there any logic in our encouraging Israel to operating outside of the Nuclear Proliferation Agreement?

The answer is no: The American Jewish Lobby, representing no more than 2.2% of Americans, has managed to take control over what we can read in the press, what we can hear on our main stream broadcast media, and what our elected politicians in Washington can safely say on the subject of Israel. No politician, no television news show host, and no newspaper editorialist will dare to question the pro-Israel position. The power of the American Jewish lobby, working through the American-Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) and similar groups, has effectively stifled all dissent.

You will find far more dissent with Israeli policies in the Jerusalem Post and Haaretz than ever makes its way into print in the U.S.

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When sending no message is the message

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From Jim Houle
Redwood Valley

Comments to: obamawatch@willitsonline.com
Excerpt from www.Obama-Watch.us

A biweekly news blog commenting upon our 44th President’ s actions and providing a scorecard on promises made and kept, promises undone or abandoned, and compromises made.** Our intent is not to tell you what to think, but to give you a few facts and let you think for yourself. We will not tell you where to mount your protests or how you can change the world.

WHEN SENDING NO MESSAGE IS THE MESSAGE
Israel’s intensive 5-day bombing of the world’s most densely populated refugee camp, the Gaza Strip, has put the incoming Obama Administration in an untenable position: While Obama has defended Israel’s right to defend itself against rocket’s fired into Jewish settlements from Gaza, he has avoided any support for the Gazan’s right to medicine, water, electric power, and even food. Neither has he condemned the targeting non-military buildings and densely-packed housing for bombing by Israeli F-16s.

When does his studied neutrality become an implicit approval of genocide? Most international observers do not believe that prevention of relatively harmless attacks by home-made short-range rockets is a justification for bombings by US made F-16s that have so far killed 450 Palestinians. The efforts of Israel to terrorize the civilian population were indicated in a January 1 report by the /New York Times/, which wrote: “Tens of thousands of Gazans have received recorded phone calls from the Israeli Army warning them that their houses have been marked as targets because they harbored either militants or weapons facilities like rocket workshops. Noncombatants were urged to clear out. Hundreds of thousands of leaflets gave the same message.” In an area 25 miles long and only 3 to 7 miles wide, the 1.4 million Palestinians have no where to go to avoid becoming targets for the F-16s.

Israel has now initiated a very ill-advised ground invasion of Gaza. Hamas is well dug-in and, while lacking tanks and artillery, is said to be as well-prepared to disable IDF tanks as the Hezbullah was in the summer of 2006 in South Lebanon. Now is the opportunity for a few sane words from Washington by both Obama and Rice. By maintaining silence, they are both complicit in further Israeli actions.

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