Day: June 10, 2016

Don’t be fooled by claims that TPP would create jobs

Last year the country was told that the new trade agreement, the TPP, would bring the light of prosperity to the nation…..that angels would descend and bless the country with wealth and riches for all…..

It was such a good deal that it was held secret from everyone until the thing was signed…..that is how good this thing will be for all of us peasants……

Guess what?  It was B*LLSHIT!

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is a massive “free trade” agreement with 11 Pacific Rim nations. Recently signed, it cannot go into effect unless Congress approves. The pact would make it easier for corporations to offshore more American jobs and push down our wages. It would give big drug firms new rights to raise medicine prices, and it would flood us with unsafe imported food.

The Obama administration received a four-Pinocchio rating from The Washington Post when it claimed that the TPP would help support 650,000 jobs nationwide. California already has lost more than 417,000 manufacturing jobs since the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. And it’s not just manufacturing jobs. California’s $403 million trade surplus with NAFTA nations flipped to a $187 million deficit after the pact.

Source: Don’t be fooled by claims that TPP would create jobs | The Sacramento Bee

Oh goody….another NAFTA-esque piece of crap that will finish the destruction of the middle class….after all NAFTA created an illegal immigration problem and a further decline of the middle class….

Feel better now?

Two important lessons from Israeli attack on the USS Liberty

Another article on the murderous attack by Israeli planes on an American ship, the USS Liberty……this is a seldom remembered tragedy and the deaths of Americans should never be forgotten even if they are the result of an Ally….

I have been asked why I seem to be down on Israel……I point to this incident…….

Today, June 8, 2016, is the 49th anniversary of the cowardly and deadly Israeli attacks on the USS Liberty. The repeated Israeli attacks from the air and sea on the American Navy ship on June 8, 1967 killed 33 American sailors and Marines and one American civilian while wounding 174 Americans. This tragic case is offering every American lessons regarding the Jewish state of Israel and US politicians and military brass.

After repeatedly attacking the USS Liberty from the air and from the sea, once Israel realized the crew of the USS Liberty had been able to get a message off to the Sixth Fleet that they were under attack, Israel lied and said it was an accident. The survivors know that Israel is lying and that the repeated and deadly attacks by the Jewish state were very deliberate.

US military brass (bureaucrats in uniform) ordered the survivors to remain completely silent about Israel’s war crime. The Commander in Chief at the time, Lyndon Johnson, immediately accepted Israel’s irrational excuse that the attack was a mistake. Johnson even lied about the USS Liberty attack in his autobiography by claiming 10 men were killed instead of 34 and lowering the number of wounded from 174 to 100. (It’s interesting and revealing of LBJ’s complete lack of courage and character that he lied about being under enemy fire and received a Silver Star for gallantry based on that lie.)

Source: Two important lessons from Israeli attack on the USS Liberty | Examiner.com

Please help these fallen Americans to be remembered and to help have Israel be finally held accountable.

Thank you!

America’s Habit of Fighting Unnecessary Wars

Yes Irene…the old hippie radical reads the American Conservative….it is a shame that more so-called “conservs” do not do the same thing……they might improve their standings with the people….just a thought.

While I may not agree with them on too much still it does not preclude them from offering some intriguing thoughts…..

I have pointed out on numerous occasions that the US is too involved in interventionism….that some of our wars are totally unnecessary to preserve the sanctity of our republic…..and yet we find situation after situation that will involve our troops and the chances of an escalation.

I read a couple of really good articles in the American Conservative that need to be read and understood….not that I will lead that parade….but I offer them up with the hopes that someone will take the time to see what our leaders are doing to our country.

Max Boot offers some typically wrongheaded thoughts on America’s foreign wars. He alleges that the U.S. has a habit of losing “won” wars:

What do all these betrayals of trust have in common? A failure by the American population and politicians to sustain a long-term commitment that would build on battlefield gains [bold mine-DL].

In every case Boot cites, he faults the “population and politicians” for their unwillingness to persist in prolonged conflicts or long-term postwar political projects that weren’t part of the original reasons for the war. If this keeps happening, it is probably because the public can’t see the value in sacrificing more American lives in unnecessary wars that had little or nothing to do with U.S. security, and it is probably because no one expected that fighting a given war entailed making a decades-long commitment to remaking the country in question. If that were understood in advance, Americans would likely be much less willing to support those wars, which is one reason why supporters of each new war always minimize how much it will cost, how long it will last, and how much the U.S. will have to keep doing once the initial campaign has ended.

Source: America’s Habit of Fighting Unnecessary Wars | The American Conservative

Predictably the war hawks will use terror as a tool to keep one intervention after another…..they use every event as a stepping stone to yet another intervention and yet more use of American troops….

Last month, several Baghdad bombings attributed to ISIS killed more than a hundred civilians and wounded hundreds more. The attacks are a tragic reminder that Iraq is still a nation in turmoil. But they should also be a reason—more than 13 years after the decision to topple Saddam Hussein and undertake nation-building in Mesopotamia—to reevaluate U.S. policy in Iraq.

The occupation of Iraq has cost more than $2 trillion. The cost to deploy a single soldier there is estimated at roughly $775,000 per year; with nearly 5,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, that’s almost $4 billion per year. And the cost of airstrikes is about $8 million a day—or about $3 billion per year. Are these costs worth continuing to bear?

Source: Permanent Mideast Intervention Won’t Stop Terror | The American Conservative

Americans need to look beyond the candidates and the election and see what is in store for this country in the near future……it is not a pretty picture and by ignoring it we will only make it worse.

 

Liberty Survivors Say US Still Downplays Israel’s Attack on Ship

This article is a couple of days late….but at least someone remembers……

The U.S. Navy’s official story on the incident omits naming Israel as the attacker.

Nearly a half century after the USS Liberty — a lightly armed American spy ship — was almost sunk by Israeli air and sea forces during the Six Day War, survivors say the U.S. still prefers to avoid dealing with what happened and identifying who attacked the ship.

Strafed by machine-gun fire, hit by napalm and torpedoed over the course of the 75-minute attack, the Liberty has one of the most highly decorated crews in American naval history.

Source: Liberty Survivors Say US Still Downplays Israel’s Attack on Ship | Military.com

It’s Not Who You Know

Ever heard that expression…”It is not who you know but rather who you blow”?

I can give you a prime example of how that works…..and my example will be Saudi Arabia…..

For over a year now the Saudis have been bombing the crap out of Yemen all on the pretense of going after the Houthi, a Shia militia that they, the Saudis, claim are threatening the religious shrines in the kingdom.

During this conflict they have killed more civilians than Houthi miltiamen and the UN acted to make them pay for this disaster……

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon slammed the Saudi Arabia-led coalition fighting in Yemen for killing and maiming children by adding it to an annual blacklist of states and armed groups that violate children’s rights during conflict.

The coalition was responsible for 60 percent of child deaths and injuries last year, killing 510 and wounding 667, according to Ban’s report released on Thursday, which also said the coalition carried out half the attacks on schools and hospitals.

The Saudi-led coalition began a military campaign in Yemen in March last year with the aim of preventing Iran-allied Houthi rebels and forces loyal to Yemen’s ex-President Ali Abdullah Saleh from taking control of the country.

(Reuters)

Of course the Saudis went batcrap crazy being put on a “blacklist”……and they turn to their paid agents in America….the bureaucrats.

The UN has announced it is altering last week’s “blacklist” of violators of children’s rights to remove the Saudi-led coalition attacking Yemen, amid intense diplomatic pressure from the Saudi government to change the list.

The coalition was responsible for an estimated 60% of the children killed in Yemen last year, though Saudi officials insisted that any inclusion on the list “contradicts” previous UN resolutions which endorsed the government the Saudi war intends to prop up.

UN officials had previously resisted the Saudi demand to remove them from the list, but backed down pretty quickly when Saudi officials started making statements of outrage about being included. The UN insists the removal is simply “pending review,” citing Saudi claims of inaccurate data.

(antiwar.com)

See when all else fails…call in the favors that are owed for all the cash they spread around the M-IC….

See….it is not who you know but who you blow that saves the day.