Day: April 13, 2011

It’s Official! They Lie!

Damn I love being proved right!

I have been saying that our elected officials are nothing short of masterful liars….that nothing they say is ever the truth…they lie to get elected and they lie once in Washington….just to promote their personal agenda….and the people can be damned!

And now it has been confirmed!  And by Sen. John Kyl……when he was speaking on the floor of the Senate during the Planned Parenthood debate….he said…

“Everybody goes to clinics, to hospitals, to doctors, and so on. Some people go to Planned Parenthood. But you don’t have to go to Planned Parenthood to get your cholesterol or your blood pressure checked. If you want an abortion, you go to Planned Parenthood, and that’s well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does,” the senator crowed.

And then later his office had to clarify his statement about the 90% thing…..

Kyl said his remark was “not intended to be a factual statement.”

For those that are confused…..”not intended to be a factual statement”….means he was LYING!

So, sports fans….it is now official…..THEY LIE!

Despots, Every One

I originally intended to do a post on the Arab nationalism and how they came to power and what it actually, (the term that is) unfortunately it is subject that could take me weeks to explain to the average American reader….it is a complex set of circumstances that grips a population and then tears at the psyche of the people at a later date….similar to what is happening in the Middle East today…..there were noble intentions in the past to bring the Arab world into the modern era…..but in the trip to the present the train of social justice was commandeered by those that set themselves up as despots and authoritarian leaders….”power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely”….that quote is never more accurate than in the Middle East……

In my search for accurate information I wound up with about 30 pages of notes…as I tried to arrange them into a coherent post I found I was making myself absolutely NUTS!  After sitting back, smoked a butt and thought about how and where to begin….I decided to play with my two best friends, Little Man and baby Girl…….after an exhausting round of Baby Girl teaching me to play “Fetch”…..I decided to try again…….

While reading various news sites trying to find a hook I came across a piece in the Zimbabwe Independent written by Alemayehu Mariam…..this person pretty much captured the whole thing that I was trying to say……..

Simply stated, a thugtatorship is rule by a gang of thieves and robbers (thugs) in designer suits. It is becoming crystal clear that much of Africa today is a thugocracy privately managed and operated for the exclusive benefit of bloodthirsty thugtators.In a thugtatorship, the purpose of seizing and clinging to political power is solely to accumulate personal wealth for the ruling class by stealing public funds and depriving the broader population of scarce resources necessary for basic survival. The English word “thug” comes from the Hindi word “thag” which means con man.

In India “thugees”, well-organised criminal gangs, robbed and murdered unsuspecting travellers over a century ago. Africa’s “thugees” today mug, rob, pillage, plunder and rape unsuspecting nations and peoples and secrete away their billions in stolen loot in European and American banks.

Thugtatorships in Africa thrive in the political economy of kleptocracy. Widespread corruption permeates every corner of society. Oil revenues, diamonds, gold bars, coffee and other commodities and foreign aid are stolen outright and pocketed by the thugtators and their army of thugocrats. Public funds are embezzled and misused and state property misappropriated and converted to private use.

Publicly-owned assets are virtually given away to supporters in “privatisation programmes’ or secretly held in illegal transactions. Bank loans are given out to front enterprises owned secretly by the thugtators or their supporters without sufficient or proper collateral.

One of the common tricks used by thugtators to cling to power is to terrorise the people with warnings of an impending Armageddon. They say that if they are removed from power, even after 42 years, the sky will fall and the earth will open up and swallow the people. Thugtators sow fear, uncertainty and doubt in the population and use misinformation and disinformation to psychologically defeat, disorient and neutralise the people.Africa’s thugtatorships have longstanding and profitable partnerships with the West. Through aid and trade, the West has enabled these thugocracies to flourish in Africa and repress Africans. To cover up their hypocrisy and hoodwink the people, the West is now lined up to “freeze” the assets of the thugtators. It is a drama they have perfected since the early days of African independence.

What can I say?  Thank you Mariam for making my effort a little less painful and much easier……..

This is a great word…….”Thugtator”…….and this is what will occur again with all the unrest in the Middle East….a savior will step forward and after power is consolidated he will become yet another despot that we in the West will jump behind 100%….after all the excitement and flash of reporting is done…the Middle East will once again become a land where despots continue to crap on their people…..and the US and the West will support almost unconditionally…..

And if a sort of democracy is ever established the outcome could be the same as the outcome in Kazakhstan where the latest election of a despot was a replay of his other elections…..from the Atlantic……

Three days before the vote, he published an op-ed in the Washington Post titled “Kazakhstan’s steady progress toward democracy.” He sent an adviser on a tour of Western capitals to promote the election; in Washington, the adviser — modestly, it turns out — predicted Nazarbayev would win between 80 and 92 percent of the vote.

Foreign election observers found evidence of ballot box stuffing and apparent multiple votes, charges that the government quickly denied. “I believe that it is the most ideal election ever in the history of all the elections,” said one presidential adviser, Yermukhamet Yertysbayev.

Democracy is a wonderful concept……but……despots rule in the Middle East…that is reality!

Brothers With Arms

College of Political Knowledge

Subject:  Middle East

No, Irene…all is NOT well in the Middle East!  And NO….it has not gone away!

There is a discussion or even a debate going on about the possibility of arming the Libyan rebels in their fight against the Qaddafi regime and all its military might……some are remembering our other “arming” of rebels fighting a militarily superior force……..We’ve been down this “old, dark path” before, and it rarely ends well, says Max Fisher in The Atlantic. From Afghanistan to Nicaragua, U.S.-armed insurgencies usually “create instability and violence” that add to a country’s problems. Britain and France may send weapons to Libya even without the U.S., but America, at least, shouldn’t add another chapter to our “sordid history” of arming insurgents.

No, we can’t risk arming jihadists: With the rebels apparently in a “disorganized, panicked retreat” once again, it’s tempting to want to do something, says Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway. But giving them weapons “poses at least two problems”: Key coalition allies would defect, and we’d be arming a rebel force that contains “flickers” of potential al Qaeda and Hezbollah fighters, according to NATO. It “seems rather inadvisable” to arm our enemies.

I am old enough to remember the disaster of arming the Contras and rebels in El Salvador…..there were many massacres done with American weapons and with American training….it was NOT a pretty policy and we should NOT allow this again….look at Afghanistan…..we armed and trained the rebels during the Russian invasion of the country…..and that turned out fairly crappy….AQ received a lot of assistance from the US and we had to pay for it later…..I do NOT want to relive that horrendous act!  How about you?

We definitely do NOT need another Iran-Contra Affair…..But then when has the US ever butted out of another country’s internal situations?